Which garden?

[Maja]

I would like to know which garden (in England or United States) served as example for the garden featuring in the book The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

[pandplover]

heya,
Well there are about 4 gardens that influenced Frances Hodgson Burnett when writing the Secret Gardeb.However she had become rather obsessed witha walled garden at Maytham Hall near Rolvenden in kent, which was for many years her home when she was not in America :yawnb: Hope that helps!!

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[Logos]

Hello Maja, I found some interesting links..

there is a blurb at this link (http://www.harpercollins.com/global_scripts/product_catalog/author_xml.asp?authorid=11869) that says:

"Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924) grew up in England, but she began writing what was to become The Secret Garden in 1909, when she was creating a garden for a new home in Long Island, New York."


but the following link says:


"It has often been claimed, wrongly, that she wrote this book based on a garden she kept in Bailey's Bay, Hamilton Parish, Bermuda. Actually, it was a garden in England - to be specific, the walled garden at Great Maytham Hall at Rolvenden, Cranbrook, Kent - where she wrote it, with its 18 acres of parkland nearby with bluebells, daffodils and flowering trees.

Some time after the book published, she visited Bermuda for the first time - and stayed. After a brief sojourn at the Princess Hotel, she rented the house "Clifton Heights" owned by the Outerbridge family, in Bailey's Bay, on the North Shore Road. Burnett settled in Bermuda to get away from the chronic claustrophobia of an adoring public in the USA and the winter weather of her Long Island New York home. At "Clifton," she indulged in her passion for growing roses, especially after her earlier English times. She once wrote to her friends about her 762 roses: "They will bloom when New York is 70 degrees below zero and London is black with fog and slopped with mud and rain." They did. She loved Bermuda so much she continued to reside here until her death in 1924 at the age of 75. She was buried at Roslyn Cemetery, Roslyn, New York, USA."

From http://www.bermuda-online.org/gardens.htm


there is info about the Great Maytham Hall gardens at this link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/kent/gardening/gardens.shtml

:)

[BMWROCKZ]

:confused: or :nod: I think the garden's in England, not sure???

[chancegardener]

and you'll find it in the Book of Genesis. Think about it -- a beautiful garden where a man and woman who loved eachother used to spend time together without a care in the world. And then the woman has a Great Fall, due to a tree in the garden (yes!), death comes into their world, and the door of the garden is locked and no one is allowed to go there again.

Or is it locked forever???? Maybe not . . .

[lucolgan]

Frances Hodgson Burnett grew up on the door step of this park when she was a child in England. Many features of the book including the parks mansion are said to be similarly to how the park looked back then. She may have portrayed how the park looked to her as a child when writing the book. Other famous people who were often seen in the park were L.S Lowry and Emmeline Pankhurst.