Mary enters the secret garden

Mary Lennox enters the secret garden for the first time, a moment that transforms the abandoned, locked space into a living sanctuary and marks the beginning of her own emotional and physical renewal. This event, the culmination of her search guided by the robin and the discovery of the buried key, is the central turning point of the novel, shifting the story from isolation and decay to connection and growth.

Discovery and First Entry

After finding the key buried in freshly turned earth and the door hidden beneath a curtain of ivy, Mary, her heart thumping and hands shaking with excitement, fits the key into the lock. It takes both hands to turn it, but it does turn. She takes a long breath, looks behind her up the long walk to ensure no one is coming, and then, holding back the swinging ivy, pushes the door open slowly. She slips through, shuts it behind her, and stands with her back against it, breathing fast with excitement, wonder, and delight.

The Garden's Appearance

Inside, Mary finds the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place imaginable. High walls are covered with leafless stems of climbing roses, so thick they are matted together. The ground is covered with wintry brown grass, out of which grow clumps of bushes that are surely rosebushes if they are alive. Standard roses have spread their branches like little trees. Climbing roses have run all over the other trees, swinging down long tendrils that form light, swaying curtains and, here and there, have caught at each other or at far-reaching branches, creeping from one tree to another to make lovely bridges. With neither leaves nor roses, the thin gray or brown branches and sprays look like a hazy mantle spreading over everything—walls, trees, and even the brown grass where they have fallen from their fastenings and run along the ground. It is this hazy tangle from tree to tree that makes it all look so mysterious.

First Reactions and the Robin

The stillness is profound. Mary whispers, "How still it is!" and then realizes she is the first person who has spoken in here for ten years. She moves away from the door, stepping as softly as if afraid of awakening someone, glad that the grass makes no sound. She walks under one of the fairy-like gray arches between the trees and looks up at the sprays and tendrils, wondering if they are all quite dead. The robin, who has flown to his treetop, sits without stirring, watching her. She feels as if she has found a world all her own. The sun shines inside the four walls, and the high arch of blue sky over this particular piece of Misselthwaite seems even more brilliant and soft than over the moor.

Immediate Discoveries and Work

Her skipping-rope still over her arm, Mary walks about and then begins to skip around the whole garden. Near an alcove with a stone seat, she stops and sees something sticking out of the black earth—sharp little pale green points. Remembering what Ben Weatherstaff had said, she kneels to look at them, whispering that they might be crocuses or snowdrops or daffodils. She bends close to sniff the fresh scent of the damp earth. She walks slowly, keeping her eyes on the ground, and finds ever so many more sharp, pale green points. Excited, she whispers that it isn't a quite dead garden—even if the roses are dead, other things are alive. Finding a sharp piece of wood, she kneels and digs and weeds out the grass and weeds around them, making nice little clear places so they can breathe. She goes from place to place, digging and weeding, enjoying herself so immensely that she throws off her coat and then her hat, smiling down on the grass and the pale green points all the time. The robin is tremendously busy, pleased to see gardening begun on his own estate. Mistress Mary works until it is time for her midday dinner, having been actually happy all the time. Dozens and dozens of the tiny, pale green points are now visible in cleared places, looking twice as cheerful as before.

Significance and Aftermath

This first entry establishes the garden as a secret, transformative space. Mary's immediate impulse to nurture the hidden life within it—weeding, clearing, and caring for the emerging shoots—mirrors her own nascent growth. The garden, long dead to the world, begins to come alive under her hands, and she, in turn, begins to come alive herself. She leaves the garden with red cheeks and bright eyes, eating a hearty dinner that delights Martha, and she resolves to return that afternoon. The secret garden is no longer just a locked, forgotten place; it is now her kingdom, a world she has discovered and begun to restore.