"To the gardener in winter one’s future is the spring. All the dark months may be filled by it. To live in brilliantly colored and eloquent catalogues is to dream dreams unlike all others that glorify our days; to pore over gardening books is to glow with joy, ambition and flaming desire for loveliness, color, fragrance and still, sweet delight."

A book worth checking out just based on the lovely botanical cover, Marta McDowell writes about Frances Hodgson Burnett's various gardens and how they influenced her stories, especially [b:The Secret Garden|2998|The Secret Garden|Frances Hodgson Burnett|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327873635l/2998._SY75_.jpg|3186437]. This well-researched book is conversational in tone and there are multitudes of gorgeous photos. (Just to show the variety of subjects covered, I've included the Table of Contents below.) This also makes a great companion piece to The Secret Garden by Burnett but be aware there are spoilers in this nonfiction book. I'd recommend this to anyone who loves gardening and nature, even if you aren't a huge fan of Burnett's fictional story.

CONTENTS:
Preface
PART ONE: before THE SECRET GARDEN
CHAPTER ONE The Locked Door: England & America (1849–1897)
CHAPTER TWO Finding the Key: Maytham Hall, Kent (1898–1908)
Spring at Maytham, Summer at Maytham, Autumn at Maytham

PART TWO: inside THE SECRET GARDEN
CHAPTER THREE A Gardener’s Guide to The Secret Garden: Misselthwaite Manor, Yorkshire
Spring at Misselthwaite, Summer at Misselthwaite, Autumn at Misselthwaite

PART THREE: after THE SECRET GARDEN
CHAPTER FOUR Nest Building: Plandome Park, New York (1909–1920)
CHAPTER FIVE A New Bit of Earth: Clifton Heights, Bermuda (1912–1920)
CHAPTER SIX When the Sun Went Down: Clifton Heights & Plandome Park (1921–1924)

PART FOUR: outside THE SECRET GARDEN
CHAPTER SEVEN Further Garden Writings of Frances Hodgson Burnett
Frances Has the Last Laugh: “An American Author’s English Ha-ha” (1906)
Connecting with Nature: My Robin (1912)
Gardening for Everybody: In the Garden (1924)
CHAPTER EIGHT Frances’s Plants: An Annotated List
Afterword: Sowing Seeds by Keri Wilt
Sources and Citations, Acknowledgments, Photo and Illustration, Credits Index ( )

Unearthing the Secret Garden: The Plants and Places that Inspired Frances Hodgson Burnett - Mcdowell
3 stars
The author of this book has written several books about the gardens of very famous authors. As the title announces,this book is concerned with Francis Hodgson Burnett, the author of The Secret Garden. The biographical information was interesting, especially the photographs, although there was a great deal of repetition. Much of the book’s contents felt like the excessive padding of an informative magazine article. Though the writing didn’t inspire, I did enjoy the information.

McDowell included an overlong summary of The Secret Garden which did reference how events and gardens from Hodgson’s life influenced her story. I’d practically memorized this book as a child and did not need the summary, but I loved the sampling of illustrations from various editions of the text. (I can always be tempted to buy a new edition of a favorite book just to have different illustrations.)

Part four of this book is actually the complete reprinting of magazine articles and a short book by Hodgson Burnett. I own a first edition copy of the 1912 My Robin. It’s Burnett’s account of her ‘relationship’ with an English robin in the gardens of Maytham, her rented English home. That robin became a character of note in The Secret Garden. The little book is probably long out of print, so it was interesting to find it reproduced in this book.

The book ends with an annotated list of plants mentioned in Burnett’s books and letters. My gardening is mostly limited to patio and house plants, but I enjoyed looking through the list. ( )