The Secret Garden Rewilded

Published on the centenary of the death of Frances Hodgson Burnett, this novel is an ingenious retelling of that author’s immortal The Secret Garden.  But now it is orphan Mia, a difficult, neglected modern city child, who is unwillingly transported to the deep countryside, with Dartmoor standing in for the original Yorkshire. There she meets young cousin Christopher, suffering from serious heart problems, and sparkling blue-eyed Daniel, the gardener’s saintly grandson who is also omniscient about seemingly every detail of natural life. Together they re-claim a locked away garden, helping it principally to return to a state where insects, animals and plants can best co-exist.

The author, very well informed, is understandably alarmed about our growing environmental and biodiversity crisis but never lets this anxiety turn into anything like preaching. Instead, she lets her story convey its own message through what actually happens when Mia and Christopher learn through the evidence of their own eyes about the interdependence of the natural world left to its own devices. Mia also has to go to a new school, but there is little about this compared with the drama of secret gardening, learning to ride a pony and most important of all, helping Christopher find enough confidence to leave his sick bed and start living a more normal existence. She also learns to first enjoy and then use for herself some colourful Devon dialect acquired from Daniel’s initially grumpy but finally good-hearted grandfather. Everything in the garden, meanwhile, is if not conventionally lovely at least fully functional, with all the many insects involved including tree slugs fully  playing their own part in the story.  Pleasingly written in straightforward prose, this timely story deserves every reader it can get.