'The Secret Garden' tells the tale of ten year old Mary Lennox, a mean-tempered little girl, ignored by her parents, who is made an orphan in a cholera epidemic in India and sent to Misselthwaite Manor in Yorkshire to live with an uncle she has never met.
From this unpromising start Mary slowly blossoms.
She hears of a secret garden, left untended for ten years since the death her uncle's beloved wife.
Guided by a cheeky robin, Mary finds the garden's lost key and, with the help of Dickon, a local boy with an uncanny understanding of nature, sets about restoring the site to its original glory.
The garden is transformed and, with it, Mary herself.
No longer self-absorbed, she shares her excitement with her bed-bound cousin, Colin, who is as emotionally stunted as she was, and the magic of the secret garden transforms him too, both in body and soul.
'The Secret Garden' is a touching and uplifting tale of the joy to be found in friendship and in the connection with the rhythms of Nature.
The secret garden: with a colouring page for young readers (Aziloth Books), paperback/frances hodgson burnett
