Rose Plant
The Rose Plant is the central physical object through which Colin Craven's transformation from a bedridden, hysterical invalid into a boy determined to live is made tangible and permanent. It is not merely a flower but a living symbol of the Magic the children believe in, planted by Colin's own hands at the very moment he first stood upright and declared his intention to grow strong. The rose becomes the anchor of his new identity, the proof that he is no longer a creature of the sickroom but a participant in the living world.
The Planting Ceremony
The Rose Plant enters the story on the afternoon of Colin's first day inside the secret garden, immediately after he has stood on his feet for the first time and defied Ben Weatherstaff's assumption that he was a cripple. Exultant and flushed with the strange new strength that had rushed through him, Colin took up Mary's trowel and began to scratch at the earth. Ben Weatherstaff, moved by the sight, hobbled as fast as he could to the greenhouse and returned with a rose in a pot. He knelt down by the hole Colin had been digging, broke the pot from the mould, and handed the plant to Colin with the words, "Set it in the earth thysel' same as th' king does when he goes to a new place." Colin's thin white hands shook a little as he set the rose in the mould, and his flush grew deeper as Ben made the earth firm around it. Mary leaned forward on her hands and knees, watching; Dickon's creatures—Soot the rook, Nut and Shell the squirrels—drew near to observe. When the earth was filled in and pressed down and made steady, Colin declared, "It's planted!" and asked to be helped up so that he could be standing when the sun slipped over the edge. "That's part of the Magic," he said.
The Rose as a Symbol of Transformation
The planting of the Rose Plant is inseparable from Colin's own physical and spiritual rebirth. He had spent his entire life lying on his back in a darkened room, convinced that he was going to die and that a lump was growing on his spine. The garden, and the work of making it alive, had drawn him out of that morbid obsession. On this first afternoon, after standing up to prove to Ben Weatherstaff that he was not a cripple, Colin walked to a tree and then, with the trowel in his hand, began to dig. The act of planting the rose was the first productive, outward-directed action of his life. It was a declaration that he belonged to the world of growing things, not to the world of dying. The rose, which would put out leaves and buds and flowers, became the living counterpart of his own returning health. As he stood laughing while the sun went down, the rose in the earth beside him was the proof that the Magic—whatever name one gave it—was real.
The Rose and the Magic Experiment
In the weeks that followed, the Rose Plant became a fixture of the children's daily life in the secret garden. Colin, Mary, and Dickon tended it along with all the other plants, but the rose Colin had planted held a special place. It was the first thing he had ever made grow, and it embodied his scientific experiment in Magic. Colin would chant his incantations under the plum-tree canopy, declaring that the Magic was in him and that it was making him strong, and the rose was the visible evidence that the same force that pushed green shoots out of the dark earth was also working in his own body. When Ben Weatherstaff looked at Colin's legs and shoulders and said he had gone up several pounds that week, Colin replied, "It's the Magic and—and Mrs. Sowerby's buns and milk and things. You see the scientific experiment has succeeded." The rose, planted by his own hand and thriving, was the most convincing proof of all.
The Rose and the Reunion with Mr. Craven
The Rose Plant also plays a quiet but essential role in the final reunion between Colin and his father. When Mr. Craven, drawn back to Misselthwaite by Susan Sowerby's letter and his own mysterious dream, walks into the secret garden, he finds a place transformed from the dead gray tangle he had locked away ten years before. The garden is a wilderness of autumn gold and purple and violet blue and flaming scarlet, with late roses climbing and hanging and clustering everywhere. Colin, who has just burst through the door at a full run, tells his father the whole story of the garden's revival. The roses that cover the walls and trees are the culmination of the work the children have done, and the particular rose that Colin planted with his own hands is part of that living tapestry. Mr. Craven, standing in the garden he had thought would be dead forever, listens to his son's headlong tale and understands that the boy who stands before him—straight, strong, laughing—is as much a miracle as the roses that have come alive again.
