He tells her what all the plants are and shows her how to plant the seeds. Mary trusts Dickon immediately and shows him the secret garden. She promises to send Dickon to fetch Mary a set of garden tools and some flowers that will be easy to grow. Martha tells Mary about her brother Dickon, who tames wild animals and knows everything about plants and growing things. That evening, she asks Martha whether she thinks it would be all right for Mary to have some garden tools and a bit of earth of her own. Mary discovers green shoots poking out of the soil and clears away the grass and weeds to give them room to grow. She finds it overgrown with roses, and the flowerbeds are choked with weeds and dead grass. Using the key, Mary opens the door and enters the secret garden. The robin leads Mary first to the key, then to the door hidden behind the ivy on a stone wall. She befriends the gardener Ben Weatherstaff, who introduces her to the robin who makes his nest in the garden.

Mary becomes curious and searches for the garden. After she died from an accident in the garden, Archibald locked the garden door, buried the key, and forbade anyone to go in. Martha tells her about the walled garden on the manor grounds that used to belong to the lady of the house, Lilias Craven. Her first morning at Misselthwaite Manor, Mary is awakened by a cheerful country girl, Martha Sowerby, who has been sent to wait on her. Her uncle is not at home, and Mary is told that he is not interested in seeing her and that he has a hunchback. Mary arrives near the end of winter when everything is cold and dreary, and she hates it. Her uncle’s enormous country home, Misselthwaite Manor, is situated on the Yorkshire Moors in the north of England. When she is found, she is sent to England to live with her uncle, Archibald Craven. When a cholera epidemic kills her parents and many of the servants, the rest of the servants run away, leaving Mary alone in the house. Mary grew up both spoiled and neglected because she always got her own way, but getting her own way made her so unpleasant that no one wanted to be around her. When Mary Lennox was born to English parents in India, her vain and beautiful mother handed her over to a nurse, or “Ayah,” with instructions to keep the infant out of her way.

Please note: The book uses the word “cripple” to describe a bed-ridden character, a term that would have been used during the time period when the story takes place. This study guide refers to the 100th Anniversary Edition, Kindle format. The Secret Garden has been adapted many times for stage, radio, film, and television and has been deeply beloved by both juvenile and adult readers since its first publication. Some of her contemporary writers were Lucy Maud Montgomery, Kate Douglas Wiggins, Ellen H.

The secret garden 1911