Book Summary

Mary Lennox is a sickly, sour-faced little girl who was born in India to wealthy British parents. Her parents mostly ignore her, leaving her in the care of a subservient Ayah. When a cholera epidemic makes her an orphan, she is sent to Misselthwaite Manor, an isolated country house in Yorkshire, England. There she is again left mostly to her own devices – this time by her mother's brother-in-law, Archibald Craven, a widower still mourning his beautiful young wife, who died ten years before. In hopes of escaping his painful memories, he travels constantly, leaving the Manor in the charge of the stern Mrs. Medlock. The only person who has any time for the little girl is a chambermaid, Martha, who tells Mary about a walled garden that was the late Mrs. Craven's favourite. No one has entered the garden since she died because her grieving husband locked it and buried the key.

While exploring the grounds, Mary discovers the key, which had been turned up by a robin digging for worms; soon after, she finds the hidden door. Once inside, she discovers that although the roses seem lifeless, some of the other flowers have survived. She resolves to tend the garden herself, and, although she wants to keep it a secret, she recruits the assistance of Martha's brother Dickon, who has a way with plants and wild animals. Mary gives him money to buy gardening implements, and he shows her that the roses, though neglected, are not dead. When Mary's uncle visits the house briefly for the first time since she arrived, Mary asks him for a bit of earth to make a flower garden, and he agrees. Thanks to the invigorating Yorkshire air and her new-found fascination with the garden, Mary herself begins to blossom, and loses her sickly look and unpleasant manner.

One night Mary hears someone weeping in another part of the house. When she asks questions, the servants become evasive and say they can't hear anything. Shortly after her uncle's visit, she goes exploring and discovers her uncle's son, Colin, a lonely, bedridden boy as petulant and disagreeable as Mary used to be. His father shuns him because the child closely resembles his mother; also, since Mr. Craven suffers from mild hunchback, he is morbidly convinced that Colin will develop the same condition. This fear has communicated itself to Colin, who, for purely psychological reasons, has never learned to walk. The servants have been keeping Mary and Colin a secret from one another because Colin doesn't like strangers staring at him, and is prone to terrible tantrums. Colin, however, accepts Mary and insists on her visiting him often. During these visits, Mary tells him about the secret garden.

As spring approaches, Colin becomes jealous because Mary is spending more time out in the garden with Dickon than indoors with him. One day he voices his resentment and, when Mary resists, he throws a tantrum. To the horror of the servants, Mary continues to stand her ground. When Colin calms down he asks if he can visit the garden with her. She agrees, as she and Dickon had been planning to suggest it themselves, feeling that it would do Colin good. Colin's doctor, (Mr Craven's brother and Colin's uncle) agrees to have Dickon and Mary take Colin outside in a wheelchair. Colin is delighted with the garden, and visits it with Mary and Dickon whenever the weather allows. As the garden revives and flourishes, so does he.

The first person to discover what the children are doing is the old gardener, Ben Weatherstaff, who was a favorite of Colin's mother. Since her death, he has been visiting the locked garden once or twice a year by secretly scaling the wall with a ladder. When he visits the garden for the first time since Mary's arrival (having had to miss several visits because of rheumatism), he is initially angry with the children until he sees how improved both the garden and Colin are. Colin orders him not to tell anybody, and he agrees. Colin resolves that the next time his father returns from abroad he will be able to walk and run like a normal boy. He accomplishes this through a combination of simple physical exercise and positive thinking. He refuses to think of himself as crippled, and he invents a kind of mantra to keep himself in the right, or "magic," frame of mind. He makes great progress, but keeps it hidden from everyone but Mary, Dickon, and Ben, wanting it to be a surprise.

Mr. Craven has been traveling throughout Europe but hurries home after seeing a vision of his dead wife, imploring him to come to her "in the garden!" When he receives a letter from Martha and Dickon's mother (who also knows the secret) saying "I think your lady would ask you to come if she was here", he decides to return home. He arrives while the children are outdoors. He goes out to see Colin for himself, and finds himself drawn to the secret garden, where he is astonished first to hear children's voices and then to find Colin not only racing Mary and Dickon around the garden, but winning. They take Mr. Craven into the secret garden to tell him everything. Afterward, they walk back to the house where the servants are astonished to see two miracles: Colin walking and his father looking happy again.

References

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