Inspiration: The Secret Garden

Frances Hodgson Burnett in her garden at Great Maytham Hall.

"It was my habit to sit and write there under an aged writhen tree, grey with lichen and festooned with roses. The soft silence of it – the remote aloofness – were the most perfect ever dreamed of”  - Frances Hodgson Burnett.

 Today we are diving into the real setting of one of my favourite children's gothic novels The Secret Garden, written in 1911, the descriptive mystery of the house and garden continues to inspire my designs, and probably will for ever. 

Great Maytham Hall in Kent

Based upon an actual walled garden and stately home. After divorcing her first husband and following the death of their son, Frances Hodgson Burnett returned to the UK from America in 1898, where she rented Great Maytham Hall in Kent, for 10 years. Designed by Edwin Lutyens, this was the inspiration for Misselthwaite Manor and it was here that Hodgson Burnett discovered a real neglected and overgrown walled garden created in the 1720's. Being passionate about flowers, she set about restoring it, and, as in her most famous novel, it was a robin that showed her the way to the hidden door to the garden, that was covered with ivy.

She planted hundreds of roses here, set up a table and chair, and inspired by the tranquility of the garden, wrote several novels.

Sketches for Misselthwaite wallpaper

“The Secret Garden was what Mary called it… when its beautiful old walls shut her in no-one knew where she was. It seemed almost like being shut out of the world in some fairy place… and the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.” - The Secret Garden

US cover of The Secret Garden novel 1912

Wallpapers Inspired by the Secret Garden

Secret Garden

Colour: Twilight. Non -woven wallpaper

Misselthwaite

Colour: Mist. Non-woven ECO wallpaper