BOOKreviews
Unearthing The Secret Garden: The Plants and Places That Inspired Frances Hodgson Burnett Author: Marta McDowell Publisher: Timber Press List Price: $25.95 Order Link: https://amzn.to/3tOjHhR Reviewer: Beth Py-Lieberman Celebrating its centennial this year is the classic children’s novel The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The children’s classic, which has never been out of print, still holds a place of distinction among the National Education Association’s Top 100 Books for Children. It has served as inspiration to artists and musicians, with its story retold in film, theater, and even a Japanese anime television series. Those of us who love its story of the dour, neglected 10-year-old Mary Lennox will jump at the chance to dive into Marta McDowell’s painstakingly researched new tome, Unearthing The Secret Garden. McDowell has recovered the lost story of how Burnett came to give this precious novel its enduring heartbeat. Digging into Burnett’s childhood and early life, gathering up details from her notes and letters, and chronicling her life through a rich archive of photographs, McDowell narrates the author’s well-lived life. “As bona fide fairy tales go, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s life isn’t bad. Hers is a riches-to-rags-to-riches story, set in the dark city and the pastoral countryside. There are heroes and villains, love and hate, intrigue and adventure,” writes McDowell. 18
WASHINGTON GARDENER
SEPTEMBER 2021
The story of Mary Lennox after her parents’ untimely death includes a journey to the Yorkshire country house known as Misselthwaite Manner, home of her uncle Archibald Craven. There, while left to her own devices, Mary learns of the family’s unfortunate tale of a lost mistress who died young, leaving behind her husband, the brokenhearted Craven, who travels far and wide hoping to assuage his grief. Mary soon meets her ill cousin, Colin, who is prone to dreadful temper tantrums that leave the manor home staff subject to his every whim. The two neglected, spoiled cousins become unlikely friends and Mary, while exploring the grounds, finds a locked door nestled in a stone wall. A chirping Robin leads her to where the key is buried and when the door is opened, the magic begins. A local boy Dickon and the manor’s head gardener Ben Weatherstaff take up the conspiracy to restore the secret garden behind the locked door and to bring Colin in his wheelchair to the rose-covered realm where his health is miraculously restored. When Archibald Craven arrives home from one of his sad journeys, he finds his son flushed and fresh after winning a race with Mary. Happily ever after ensues. For any fellow gardeners, whose green yearnings were birthed at the first reading of what Mary Lennox found when she unlocked the door into the walled secret garden, McDowell offers a treat in the details of Burnett’s latent gardening mastery. Citing The Secret Garden as a “horticultural trigger” or the “gateway drug for gardeners,” McDowell takes the reader on a journey to each of Burnett’s homes in England, Long Island, and Bermuda, where after the age of 50, the novelist turned her focus to gardening with a passion that can only be described as robust. With her considerable wealth and a staff of strong-backed helpers, Burnett, until she died at the age of 74 in 1924, commanded an extraordinary gardening life. Born in 1849 in Manchester, England, Burnett’s early life was one of family poverty, but her love of writing offered a way out; by age 19, she was a published author and her stories would guarantee a life of comfort.
Soon her marriage to Swan Burnett in 1873 brought two sons. Lionel, who died young, and Vivian, who would come to share in her passion for the pleasures of the garden. After her divorce in 1898, she sublet her house in London and took a lease on the spacious mid-18th century manor known as Maytham Hall in Kent. Surrounded by great oaks, horse-chestnuts, and beeches, the novelist took up horticulture as her “new fad.” At Maytham, she hired a head gardener, Bolten, “a nice old thing …who is secretly filled with joy because I am ‘a lady as loves flowers.’” In Bolten, she would find the seeds for crafting the character of Ben Weatherstaff, the gruff old caretaker who befriends Mary Lennox. The home was a place for friends to gather and entertain. “I have artfully arranged things so that instead of seeing my friends in rooms crowded with people I see them in old gardens crowded with roses,” Burnett wrote to one of her editors. Maytham would be just the beginning of Burnett’s spectacular gardening rehabs. McDowell’s tireless researches and delightful prose recount anecdotes and details of Burnett’s efforts to make a life for flowers at her subsequent homes in Long Island and Bermuda, where she spent her winters. Rich in details, lavish with illustrations, including many from the story’s various print versions, this book is a must-have for anyone whose first horticulture passions were triggered by that gateway drug to gardening, otherwise known as The Secret Garden. o Beth Py-Lieberman is Smithsonian magazine’s senior museums editor. She gardens at home with visiting deer in Silver Spring, MD, and is the volunteer liaison for the Fenton Street Community Garden.
The Woodchip Handbook: A Complete Guide for Farmers, Gardeners and Landscapers Authors: Ben Raskin Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing List Price: $24.95 Order Link: https://amzn.to/3lvbWtw Reviewer: Andrea F. Siegel There’s a lot more of value to say about woodchips than you’d expect, which is something that makes The Woodchip
