50 Fun Facts About The Secret Garden

Which disease kills Mary Lennox's parents in India at the start of The Secret Garden?

Cholera kills so many so fast that the surviving servants flee the bungalow. Mary is simply forgotten until officers find her standing alone in the nursery.

Which bird leads Mary Lennox to the long-lost key and the hidden door in The Secret Garden?

A robin shows Mary where the rusty key lies and, soon after, the door itself. The author based him on a real bird that kept her company while she wrote outdoors in England.

Mary Lennox's uncle in The Secret Garden lives on the edge of a moor in which English county?

Yorkshire gives the book its speech as well as its setting. Mary comes to love the broad local dialect and tries to learn to speak it herself.

Which novelist began The Secret Garden while planning a garden for her own home on Long Island?

Frances Hodgson Burnett called it her favourite of her own novels. Even so, her obituaries in 1924 passed over the book in silence.

Which word do other children in The Secret Garden use when they tease Mary Lennox with a rhyme?

Contrary stuck so firmly that the author's working title for the whole novel was Mistress Mary. The clergyman's son Basil starts the teasing.

How are Mary Lennox and the bedridden Colin Craven related to each other in The Secret Garden?

Cousins, because Colin's late mother was the sister of Mary's father. A 1987 TV film cut the family tie so the pair could fall in love as adults.

What did Archibald Craven do with the key after locking his late wife's garden in The Secret Garden?

Buried it, and for ten years nobody knew where. A dog digging for a mole finally turned up the soil and left the key showing.

Which actress earned a BAFTA nomination as the stern housekeeper in the 1993 film The Secret Garden?

Maggie Smith was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for the role. The British Film Institute later put the film on its list of 50 to see by the age of 14.

Which actor played Archibald Craven in the 2020 film The Secret Garden, decades after appearing in a 1987 TV version?

Colin Firth had a brief part in the 1987 TV film as the grown-up Colin Craven. That means he has now played both the son and the father.

In which Roald Dahl book does the young heroine name The Secret Garden her favourite children's book?

Matilda has read every children's book in her village library by the age of four and a quarter. She rates this one the best of them all.

What is the name of the hundred-room house on the moor where Mary Lennox goes to live in The Secret Garden?

Misselthwaite Manor is six hundred years old, and most of its rooms stay shut up and locked. Mary spends one rainy day wandering its corridors alone.

Which stern housekeeper meets Mary Lennox in London and takes her north by train in The Secret Garden?

Mrs. Medlock went to school with Dickon's mother. She tells her master she would always take that woman's advice about children.

Which young housemaid, Dickon's sister, first tells Mary Lennox about the locked garden in The Secret Garden?

Martha is amazed that a girl of Mary's age cannot dress herself. Her wages go home to help feed a family of twelve children.

Which flowers did Colin Craven's mother grow over the walls and trees of her garden in The Secret Garden?

Roses meant so much to her that the old gardener kept slipping in to prune them once or twice a year after the door was locked.

In the novel The Secret Garden, what accident in the walled garden led to the death of Colin Craven's mother?

A branch gave way beneath her on an old tree she used as a seat, and she died the next day. In the 1949 film the bough falls on her instead.

What name does Colin Craven give the force he says makes the plants grow in The Secret Garden?

Magic is something Colin decides to test as a scientific experiment. He sits everyone cross-legged under a tree and chants that it is inside him.

How does Colin Craven travel when Dickon first takes him outdoors to the hidden garden in The Secret Garden?

In a wheelchair pushed by Dickon, after the strongest footman carries him downstairs. Colin first orders every gardener to keep clear of the path.

What plant has grown over the door of the locked garden, hiding it from Mary Lennox, in The Secret Garden?

Trailing ivy hangs over it like a loose curtain. A gust of wind swings the trails aside, and Mary spots the round knob of the door underneath.

Whose shocked remark about crooked legs makes Colin Craven stand up for the first time in The Secret Garden?

Ben Weatherstaff, glaring over the wall from a ladder, had believed the gossip that the boy was a cripple. Fury gets Colin up and onto his feet.

What does Mary Lennox think the dark, windy moor might be on her night carriage ride in The Secret Garden?

The sea is her guess because the wind makes a wild, low, rushing sound in the dark. She is told it is miles of land where only heather, gorse and broom grow.

What kind of animal is Captain, the orphan Dickon rescued and tamed on the moor in The Secret Garden?

A fox cub that Dickon found half-drowned in its hole after its mother was killed, Captain was carried home inside the boy's shirt to keep warm.

In the novel The Secret Garden, which bird is Soot, the tame black companion that follows Dickon everywhere?

A crow that Dickon found half-drowned and tamed, Soot is named for being so black. The 1949 film gives the boy a raven instead.

What is Dickon playing to an audience of wild animals when Mary Lennox first meets him in The Secret Garden?

A wooden pipe, rough and simple, has a cock pheasant and two rabbits creeping close to listen. Dickon rises very slowly so that he will not scare them.

What does Mary Lennox ask her uncle for when he offers her toys, books or dolls in The Secret Garden?

A bit of earth is all she wants, so that she can plant seeds and watch them grow. Her uncle says she reminds him of someone else who loved growing things.

Which gift does Dickon's mother buy Mary Lennox for twopence from a passing pedlar in The Secret Garden?

A skipping rope was something Mary had never seen before. Skipping along the paths gives her the strength and appetite she lacked in India.

Which condition does Colin Craven dread developing, as his father did, in The Secret Garden?

A hunched back is his great dread, and he keeps expecting to feel a lump. Mary checks his spine during a tantrum and tells him there is not one as big as a pin.

In The Secret Garden, Mary Lennox compares the bossy Colin Craven to which kind of Indian prince she once saw?

A rajah she saw in India was a boy covered in rubies, emeralds and diamonds whom everyone had to obey in a minute. The narrator then keeps giving Colin the title.

What does Colin Craven keep hidden behind a silk curtain above his mantelpiece in The Secret Garden?

His mother's portrait stays covered because he dislikes her laughing face watching him when he is ill and miserable. Once he is well, he leaves the curtain open.

Which dialect word does Dickon use for a plant that is still alive in The Secret Garden?

Wick means alive or lively, and Dickon proves it by cutting into grey stems with his knife to show Mary the green inside.

In The Secret Garden, what is the Indian term for the nursemaid who raises Mary Lennox instead of her mother?

Ayah is the word for the nurse paid to keep Mary out of her mother's sight. Waking to find a stranger at her bedside is Mary's first sign that something is wrong.

Which small carved animals fill a cabinet Mary Lennox finds while exploring her uncle's house in The Secret Garden?

Elephants, about a hundred of them and all made of ivory, some carrying mahouts or palanquins. Mary stands on a footstool and plays with them for a long time.

Which foods do the children roast in a tiny stone oven they build in the wood in The Secret Garden?

Potatoes and eggs fill the children up in secret. That lets Colin keep sending his meals away so the household still believes he is an invalid.

Which hymn does Dickon sing in the garden to give thanks for Colin Craven's recovery in The Secret Garden?

The Doxology is the old gardener's gruff suggestion, though he says he never saw any sense in it before. By the last line he is singing along with wet cheeks.

What is Colin Craven doing when he bursts out of the garden door into his father's arms in The Secret Garden?

Running a race against Mary, and winning it, is how the boy his father left bedridden comes crashing into him. Colin then announces he will be an athlete.

In which English industrial city was the author of The Secret Garden born, before her family emigrated to America?

Manchester saw its cotton trade collapse during the American Civil War. Her widowed mother had to sell the family ironmongery business two years before they left.

Which American state did the future author of The Secret Garden settle in as a teenager when her family left England?

Tennessee is where she began selling stories to magazines as a teenager to help support the family. Their first winter there was spent in a log cabin outside Knoxville.

Which other novel by The Secret Garden's author follows Sara Crewe, a rich pupil turned servant at a London school?

A Little Princess started as a short novella and then became a stage play. Only after that did her publisher ask her to expand it into the full novel.

Which English county is home to Great Maytham Hall, whose overgrown walled garden inspired The Secret Garden?

Kent was the author's home from 1898 to 1907. She found the old walled garden there neglected, restored it, and wrote several books at a table in its gazebo.

In what form did The Secret Garden first reach the public in 1910, before it came out as a book?

A magazine serial for grown-ups, in fact: it ran in ten issues of The American Magazine. That debut led many early readers to take it for adult fiction.

Which Victorian novel about an orphan governess did one critic call The Secret Garden a children's version of?

Jane Eyre also sends an orphan to a mysterious mansion whose master is largely absent. The author knew the likeness and mentioned the remark in a letter.

Which child star, winner of a juvenile Oscar, played Mary Lennox in the 1949 film The Secret Garden?

Margaret O'Brien had won her juvenile Oscar for Meet Me in St. Louis. Novelist Noel Streatfeild watched the filming and turned it into her book The Painted Garden.

Which future Quantum Leap star played the bedridden Colin Craven in the 1949 film The Secret Garden?

Dean Stockwell was a Hollywood child actor four decades before he played Admiral Al Calavicci on Quantum Leap. He later earned an Oscar nomination for Married to the Mob.

How do the scenes inside the restored garden stand out in the mostly black-and-white 1949 film The Secret Garden?

They are in Technicolor, so only the garden blooms in colour while the gloomy house stays grey. Critic Leonard Maltin later called the film vividly atmospheric.

Which award did 11-year-old Daisy Eagan win for playing Mary Lennox in the 1991 stage musical The Secret Garden?

A Tony Award for Best Featured Actress made her, at eleven, the youngest female winner the ceremony had seen. The musical also won for its script and its scenic design.

Which Hollywood studio made the 1949 film The Secret Garden at a loss, after first announcing it in 1946?

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer first planned the film as a vehicle for the young actor Claude Jarman Jr. Its own records show the finished picture lost $848,000.

Which Bride of Frankenstein star played the laughing housemaid in the 1949 film The Secret Garden?

Elsa Lanchester played the maid opposite Gladys Cooper's housekeeper. She earned an Oscar nomination for another 1949 film, Come to the Stable.

Which famous director was executive producer of the 1993 film The Secret Garden through his company American Zoetrope?

Francis Ford Coppola co-founded the company with George Lucas in 1969. His production of the children's classic earned about $40 million worldwide.

In the 1993 film The Secret Garden, which disaster replaces the novel's epidemic and kills Mary Lennox's parents?

An earthquake kills them in the film, whose Mary is so repressed that she cannot cry. Her first tears come only in the closing scene.

Which stately home, later famous as Downton Abbey, played the uncle's house in the 1987 TV film The Secret Garden?

Highclere Castle supplied both interiors and exteriors, more than twenty years before the Crawleys moved in. It is the family seat of the Earls of Carnarvon.

In The Secret Garden, what kind of animals are Nut and Shell, the tame pair Dickon carries in his pockets?

Squirrels, each trained to answer its name: one leaps onto his right shoulder at the word Nut, the other onto his left at Shell.