Secret Garden Inspo

When I was little one of my favorite movies was The Secret Garden. I haven’t seen it in ages so I can’t give you specific details, but I remember having it on vhs, watching it many many times, and loving it. Although, I remember parts of it kinda scared me – probably because it mostly takes place in a dark estate. Not to mention Mary’s (the main character) uncle is a little scary.

Anyway, I loved the movie because of the big house that Mary explores and the feeling of mystery and magic when she finds and brings the secret garden back to life. The movie is based on the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, which I’ve never read but should one day. From what I remember, Mary, a young British girl living in India, is orphaned when her parents die. She is sent to live with her uncle in some estate. Her uncle is hardly ever home and is not the most pleasant man after becoming a widower. After exploring parts of the house that she’s not supposed to be in, she finds her cousin, Colin, who is bedridden and supposedly crippled. Mary also finds a key that leads to a secret garden. Untouched since the death of her aunt the garden is not looking very lively, but with the help of Dickon, the younger brother of one of the servants, she brings the garden back to life and also brings her uncle and cousin metaphorically back to life.

There is something so magical and fantastical about gardens and even more when it’s a secret garden. I’ve rounded up a few photos via Pinterest that give me all the secret garden feels!

“The Secret Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in no one knew where she was. It seemed almost like being shut out of the world in some fairy place. The few books she had read and liked had been fairy-story books, and she had read of secret gardens in some of the stories. Sometimes people went to sleep in them for a hundred years, which she had thought must be rather stupid. She had no intention of going to sleep, and, in fact, she was becoming wider awake every day which passed at Misselthwaite.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden