One of my favourite books as a child was "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I was in Fourth Class (Grade 4) when it was read to us on Thursday afternoons by our teacher. I could hardly wait for the next episode, rationed out to us in this way. Subsequently, I took it out of the library numerous times. My parents could never see the point of presenting me with my own personal copy of a library book that had been read so many times.
I bought it for my daughters and again, and I was very lucky this time, I managed to acquire a very old edition for the grandgirl. We all shared the same opinion - we absolutely adored it.
The movies that have been made of it have failed to capture the story very well. The book is quite dark which enhances the slowly brightening beauty of the garden the children create out of emotional need and loneliness.
Of the films, the 1949 version, the second movie adaptation with Margaret O'Brien, which was filmed mostly in black-and-white while the sequences set in the restored garden are in Technicolor, is my favourite. My review of it is here.
I was reminded of all of this when exploring with my dog yesterday I found this wild lost garden and its overwhelming rhododendrons. I took a photo of one and paraphrased Existentialism 101 to myself:
"If a rhododendron blooms in a wild forgotten garden, does anyone see it?"
