The Secret Garden

The story opens with a flashback: twenty-year-old Mary Lennox returns to Misselthwaite Manor after serving as a nurse during World War I. She searches for the key to the secret garden but cannot locate it. She sits down and remembers her troubled, lonely girlhood from a decade earlier.

The main story begins in colonial India with a young Mary waking in the night to find her servants unresponsive and her parents entertaining guests for a late dinner. The cholera epidemic is referenced, and her vain mother cares only about another party. The next morning, her parents die and the household collapses, with servants dead or fled, leaving Mary to be found by English officers.

Mary is taken in by Archibald Craven and sent to Misselthwaite Manor, an isolated estate on the Yorkshire moors. She finds that the servants in England do not defer to her as they did in India, setting the stage for her loneliness. Her first days there reveal a stark change from her previous life.

Mary meets Martha Sowerby, a hardworking maid who tells her about a locked secret garden whose key was discarded after the death of Mrs. Lilias Craven. The tale gives Mary something to focus on and a glimmer of companionship in the big house. The garden's mystery becomes a beacon for her.

Mary searches for the door to the garden and eventually finds both the door and the key. She discovers that the garden has fallen into ruin and neglected for years. With Dickon’s help, she resolves to revive it.

Mary begins to hear ghostly sobs at night, but the servants insist it is only the wind. One night she discovers Colin Craven, Mr. Craven’s bed-bound son, who laments his fate and fears he will die. The family environment appears cold and hostile toward him because of his temper.

Mary and Colin gradually become friends as she tells him about his late mother’s garden and how she and Dickon have been reviving it. Colin’s curiosity grows, and he demands to see the garden himself. The idea of the garden becomes a lifeline for him.

With Dickon’s help, Mary takes Colin in his wheelchair to visit the garden in secret. The magical garden inspires Colin to take his first unaided steps, and Ben Weatherstaff, the garden’s watcher, witnesses the transformation and offers to help revive the garden further.

In London, Mr. Craven receives a letter from Dickon’s mother urging his return to Misselthwaite at once. He arrives to discover the garden in full bloom and the children thriving, signaling a turning point for the household. The reunion marks a shift from neglect to care.

Colin rises and walks to his father for the first time, declaring that he is well now. The garden’s magic and the children’s care are credited with his recovery, culminating in a powerful moment of reunion. The father’s eyes soften as he watches his son reclaimed by life.

Ben Weatherstaff greets the adult Mary and hands her the key to the secret garden. They discuss what happened to Dickon, who died in the war at the Forest of Argonne, a loss that casts a shadow over the garden’s revival. The garden’s legend becomes intertwined with the people who cared for it.

The adult Colin (Colin Firth) arrives in the garden, having been wounded and recently released from hospital. He tells Mary that he had asked her to marry him before, but she waited for him to ask again in their garden. Colin proposes once more, and Mary accepts.