the fountain garden

The fountain garden is the principal formal garden at Misselthwaite Manor, a space of wide lawns, winding walks with clipped borders, trees, flower-beds, and evergreens trimmed into strange shapes. At its center stands a large pool with an old gray fountain, though when Mary Lennox first sees it the fountain is not playing and the flower-beds are bare and wintry. It is the first garden she encounters after passing through the shrubbery gate on her initial morning at the manor, and she finds it unremarkable in its winter state.

Mary's Use of the Garden for Exercise and Growth

After Martha gives Mary a skipping-rope—bought with tuppence from Martha's own wages at the suggestion of Susan Sowerby—Mary takes it to the fountain garden and begins to skip. She counts and skips, and skips and counts, until her cheeks turn red, and she becomes more interested than she has ever been since she was born. The skipping takes her round the fountain garden, up one walk and down another, and eventually into the kitchen-garden where Ben Weatherstaff sees her and exclaims that she has "skipped red into thy cheeks." The exercise in the fountain garden, combined with the fresh air from the moor, marks the beginning of Mary's physical improvement: she grows fatter, stronger, and less sallow.

Ben Weatherstaff and the Robin's Attention

When Mary skips into the kitchen-garden, Ben Weatherstaff notices her flushed cheeks and comments that she has "child's blood in thy veins instead of sour buttermilk." He also points out that the robin is watching her, having followed her from the fountain garden. The robin's curiosity about the skipping-rope—a thing he has never seen—amuses Ben, who warns the bird that "tha' curiosity will be th' death of thee sometime." The fountain garden thus becomes a stage where Mary's newfound vitality is witnessed and affirmed by the two figures who will become her earliest friends at Misselthwaite.

Narrative Significance

The fountain garden functions as a transitional space between the locked, gloomy house and the hidden, transformative secret garden. It is the place where Mary first experiences the pleasure of physical exertion in the open air, where she is seen by others as changing, and where the robin's attentiveness deepens her connection to the natural world. Unlike the secret garden, which is hidden and private, the fountain garden is open and observable—a semi-public arena where Mary's recovery is noted by the household's gardeners and servants before the greater miracle of Colin's transformation unfolds elsewhere.