BY RHONDA NIVEN

 

THIS is one of those magical books read as a child that is sure to stay with you throughout your life - making you feel all the richer for having read it.

The Secret Garden follows the journey of Mary Lennox from her sad, lonely childhood in India, on her return to the bleak wilderness of her widower uncle’s house on the Yorkshire moors following the mysterious death of her parents. A surly, indulged and generally unloved child, Mary finds life in Yorkshire difficult to adjust to after a life spent in the company of servants who catered to her every whim for fear her screams and tantrums would upset her mother, more interested in socialising than mothering. Now her tantrums tend to end in stern rebuke from the staff, who are too busy with their own work to give her much attention.

Left to her own devices, Mary wanders the house and gardens, slowly making friends for the first time in her life with the people around her. A chance discovery leads her to find the key to an abandoned walled garden and also for the first time in her life, Mary begins to think of things other than herself as she determines to restore the garden to its former beauty. Within the house, Mary follows mysterious crying in the night to discover her cousin Colin that no one had even mentioned to her. A sickly child, Colin hardly ever left his darkened room, as it "tired him", but insisted the servants dance to his tune, as he lived a lonely life convinced his father’s grief over his mother ‘s death was hatred of him, and that he would die before he grew up.

But in Mary he had finally met a match for his "temper and hysterics" that had made life a misery for those around him.

With the help of the staff, Mary and Colin tend the abandoned garden and find themselves as transformed as the garden itself.

When I read The Secret Garden as a child in New Zealand, the moors of Yorkshire with its wuthering winds, robins and walled gardens were as much an unknown mystery to me as Mary’s life in India. But the transformation of themselves and the world around them that Mary and Colin experienced by reaching out beyond themselves and learning to care for others around them was no less magical.

It really is one of life’s must read books, whether as a child or adult, and I can’t wait to share the magic with my own children.

 

This book was published by Wordsworth Editions Ltd and is available to buy for £1.99. It can also be borrowed from The Hive as well as other Worcestershire libraries. Click here to check availability and check it out.