The Secret Garden by Burnett — a book for the night: the opening, the author and a walk through London's gardens

After a run of dark evenings — «Jekyll and Hyde», «Dorian Gray», «Dracula» on Halloween — the column takes a deep breath. «The Secret Garden» by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911) is a book about a November that ends. Mary, a spoilt, unloved little girl, is sent from India to a huge house on the Yorkshire moors, and there she finds a garden locked for ten years — and the key to it. What follows is simple, and lasting for that reason: neglected things come back to life when someone takes them in hand; a sour child is cured not by medicine but by earth under the nails, fresh wind and the first green shoot. An evening with this book is like opening a window in a cold room.

The opening lines

The novel opens with a sentence every English reader of children’s classics knows by heart:

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«When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.»

A few lines on, in the same first chapter, Burnett gives her verdict without softening it: «She was as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived.» The full English text is free and legal at Project Gutenberg, eBook #113.

Why read it tonight

«The Secret Garden» rests not on the mystery of a locked gate but on a plain, rare idea: a person comes alive when they are given something to tend and answer for. Mary, used to servants doing everything for her, clears the paths herself for the first time and waits to see whether what she planted will come up; and as the garden rights itself, so does she, and so does another unhappy child in the house. It is a book with no villains and no moral driven home — only the Yorkshire wind, a robin on a branch, and black earth that turns out to be alive. The first chapter — Mary’s journey from an emptied house in India halfway across the world to her uncle’s door — takes about twenty minutes and draws you in quietly. How the garden ends is best discovered yourself.

About the author

Frances Hodgson Burnett was born on 24 November 1849 in Manchester and died on 29 October 1924 at her home near New York — over a hundred years ago, which is why her text is now in the public domain. After her father’s early death the family fell into poverty and moved to America; she began writing to support them and became famous in 1886 with «Little Lord Fauntleroy». What matters most here: from the late 1890s Burnett spent nearly a decade at Great Maytham Hall in Kent, and it was its old walled rose garden, which she brought back to life, that gave her «The Secret Garden». In 1905 came another of her books much loved in Russia, «A Little Princess».

Places to visit

«The Secret Garden» has no London address, but it has a garden that inspired it, a living London garden of the same kind, and — the point in November — a garden whose green never sleeps, even in winter.

Kew Gardens (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, London TW9 3AE) is the royal botanic garden, open all year round. While the branches outside are bare, its glasshouses — the Palm House and the Temperate House — stay warm and wholly green: exactly the feeling the book was written for. Off-peak prices (1 November – 31 January, checked 02.11.2026): adult £17 online / £20 at the gate, concession (65+ and disabled visitors) £15 online, child 4–15 £2 online, under-4s free; online is cheaper. In winter the garden closes early — check kew.org for exact hours.

Chelsea Physic Garden (66 Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea, SW3 4HS) is London’s oldest botanic garden — a walled green square hidden from the city exactly as Burnett’s garden is. Honestly: it is closed for the winter and, per its site (checked 02.11.2026), reopens in late January for «Heralding Spring». It is a garden for a spring visit, in keeping with the book itself; then: adult £11/£10, young people 5–25 and Universal/Pension Credit holders £6.50/£5, under-5s free.

Great Maytham Hall (Rolvenden, Kent TN17 4NE) is the very house with the walled garden that inspired the book (the garden laid out by Edwin Lutyens). The house was long ago divided into private flats, and the garden opens to the public only on a few days a year through the National Garden Scheme — and for this year, per NGS (checked 02.11.2026), those openings are finished. Future dates are on NGS Find a Garden; there is no point going without a date in the calendar. Burnett has no British grave — she is buried in the United States.

Where to get it

Free. The full English text is in the public domain: Project Gutenberg, eBook #113. To find it in British libraries, use the Library Hub Discover catalogue.

Buy in Russian. «The Secret Garden» in Russian translation is a staple of children’s classics; search for «Таинственный сад» at the Russian bookshops in Britain — Notre Locus and Bookashka. We don’t pin stock or price here — check the shop’s site; an English paperback is carried by ordinary British bookshops too.