I didn’t love gardening as a child. My grandmother lived next door and she had a beautiful garden full of both flowers and vegetables. It was fine to look at but I was more interested in making a play house beneath the branches of the weeping willow in her yard. I especially didn’t like having to help her pick strawberries because they weren’t like the strawberries in the grocery story. They often had bugs on them or mushy parts and of course we always picked them what seemed the hottest of days.

What I did love was the garden in THE SECRET GARDEN by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The idea of a garden behind walls where you had to go through a door to get into it was an idea I’d never even thought of. Living in a small town in Iowa surrounded by flat fields and small patches of flower gardens, the idea that someone would have the land and take the effort to build a walled garden was mind boggling.

When much later in life I discovered my own love of gardening and went back to school to study landscape horticulture and then teach horticulture courses, I often thought of the book. I’ve spent years creating my own little patches of garden in my own yard and while I don’t have lovely brick walls around it, I think it has somewhat of a feel of a hidden garden.

Today THE SECRET GARDEN is best read as a read aloud with an adult and a child so that the adult could use it as a teaching moment for some of the dated language and attitudes. Or maybe it’s a guilty pleasure read for an adult who wants a little bit of escapism. I know I’m about ready to read it again.

And I’ve got a whole list of adult fiction set in and around gardens that I’ll be posting about soon. Happy reading!