Healing Powers: 6 Stories For Garden Lovers!

Dig in to discover how tending the land often means tending the self

THE ENCHANTED APRIL: ELIZABETH VON ARNIM (1922)

Thrown together for a month in Italy, four jaded women find themselves with nothing to do but think and relax. They gravitate to the garden surrounding their villa, where nature becomes a quiet catalyst for change. The landscape sparks honesty, self-reflection, healing and unexpected friendships that transform each woman’s outlook.

THE FORGOTTEN GARDEN: KATE MORTON (2008)

The story begins with Nell, abandoned on a ship bound for Australia, and unfolds across generations as she and her granddaughter search for the truth about her origins. Their quest leads to a hidden garden in Cornwell, where family secrets are uncovered, linking past and present in a compelling mystery.

THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS: TAN ENG (2012)

Set in post-WW2 Malaysia, this lush, wistful novel follows Yun Ling Teoh, a survivor of a Japanese prison camp, who seeks solace in a hilltop garden. Through her relationship with a reclusive Japanese gardener, she gradually confronts her past and reconsiders long-held beliefs about loss, memory and forgiveness.

THE GARDEN OF SMALL BEGINNINGS: ABBI WAXMAN (2017)

Lilian, a young widow and mother of two, joins a beginner gardening class where she slowly finds new purpose and opens herself to relationships and experiences. She learns that tending a garden requires patience, care and resilience, which in turn becomes a path toward healing, renewed confidence and unexpected new beginnings in her own life.

THE RED GARDEN: ALICE HOFFMAN (2011)

Set in small-town Massachusetts, this linked-stories, magical-realist novel treats a garden almost as a character in its own right – a mysterious patch of land where only red plants grow and hidden truths tend to surface. The garden links the multi-generational stories together as families inherit houses near it, tend it, fear it, or fall in love around it.

THE SECRET GARDEN: FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT (1911)

Orphaned Mary Lennox is sent to the wilds of Yorkshire to live with her uncle; when she discovers a forgotten walled garden, both the neglected space and the people around her begin to bloom again. Widely regarded as the quintessential garden story, this timeless classic celebrates renewal, friendship and the restorative power of nature.