Hello Kindred Spirits! I am so very excited welcome a special guest to our final discussion on The Secret Garden! Today we have the author of The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s great-great-granddaughter here with us to answer a few questions, give us insight into the upcoming Secret Garden movie, and contribute a few wonderful giveaway prizes 🌸 Grab a cup of tea as we give Keri Wilt a warm kindred welcome!

Meet Keri, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Great-Great-Granddaughter!

Welcome, Keri! Please introduce yourself – we can’t wait to meet you!

Keri Wilt, Great-Great-Granddaughter of Frances Hodgson Burnett

Hello everyone. I am Keri Wilt, a speaker, writer, and heart cultivator who’s on a mission to help others live their best Well-Tended Life. That’s because not long ago, I looked down and discovered that my life had become an over-planted mess that was choking out my relationships, creativity, and purpose. I was irritable, exhausted, and watering everything but myself.

That’s when some soul-searching journaling time and a late-night re-reading of my great-great-grandmother’s classic book The Secret Garden unearthed this Well-Tended Life Truth: That EVERY locked-up, weed-filled, withering life can bloom and grow again with the help of a little magic.

Now I am not talking about the kind of magic that needs a wand and a trick top hat. I am talking about a dig in, make room, prune away, work on, water well, weed, and feed your soul kind of life-tending magic that I am sharing with live audiences, over on my vlogs, on social media, and more.

Share with us, when was the first time you read The Secret Garden? How did it impact you?

Wow…hard hitting questions right off the bat! It’s funny, when I started this writing journey 4 years ago, I knew this needed to be the very first truth I told. It was something that I felt shameful about for way too long.

When was the first time I read The Secret Garden?

The truth: 38. You heard me right. I, Keri Wilt, the great-great-granddaughter of the author of The Secret Garden, did not actually read it until 38. Go ahead…gasp in horror if you need to…I’ll wait.

Here is the deal, the pressure of reading those 375 pages just seemed too much to bear! Sure, I had read books before, but this was different. This was “THE BOOK”. The book that every time I tell someone who I am related to, they GUSH about and go all “goo-goo eyed” on me because it was their favorite book ever.

As a kid I had seen the movies, seen it on Broadway (which was amazing) and watched all my mother’s presentations to schools about Frances and her life. “What’s the big deal?” I thought. It is, of course, just a book. And I already knew the story, or at least I thought I did.

I worried: What if I don’t like it? What if it doesn’t have that same effect on me when I read it?

I think in my mind, I knew if I read The Secret Garden, that it would open my eyes to a whole new world that frankly scared me. I knew once Frances colored my world… once we “connected”… that there was no turning back.

It is my legacy to share Frances with the world. I know that now, but if I am honest with myself, I have always deep down known that. And not reading her books, kept me from having to own that.

Well, I read it and of course I loved it. The Secret Garden planted its words down deep in my heart where they continue to grow. The hope, the garden, the life lessons throughout, it all inspired me.

Can you give us insight on what inspired Frances to write The Secret Garden?

Frances was inspired by three main gardens: her grandmother’s, another down the street when she was young, and an old abandoned garden at Great Maythem Hall, a home she rented for 9 seasons in Kent, England. The latter was the most influential to the storyline, as Frances herself worked tirelessly to bring this stone walled garden back to life beside her real-life friend, a cheeky little robin.

There was even a place on one of the walls that showed a clear outline of where a door had been bricked in year’s earlier. You can almost picture her walking past this spot and pondering, “Why on earth would someone brick up the door to a garden?”

We are all looking forward to the new film adaptation of The Secret Garden arriving this year. Is there anything you can share with us about it?

I am so excited I can hardly stand it! The trailer gives me goosebumps every single time I watch it. I think what I am most excited about, is that this updated version looks to have captured the garden’s color and magic in a way that prior releases have not. Many were dark and a bit too dreary for me.

Inside Scoop: Fair warning to the hardcore book people who get upset if the story doesn’t follow the original book to the letter. While the story is true to the book, the producers did change the time period up a bit to make it more relatable to today’s kids. I tell you this ahead of time because I don’t want anyone to be so distracted by the changes that they miss the beauty in what has been created with this refreshed version!

I often have people ask me if I get upset about liberties taken with her work. My answer is always no. I am not upset, and I know Frances would not be either. This is why.

Frances knew what it was to try and convert a book into a play. She actually did this herself several times, most notably with two of her biggest literary successes: A Little Princess and Little Lord Fauntleroy. She knew the process, the pains, and how the pace of the story sometimes must change in order to fit a new format.

Frances also changed some of her own story lines, time periods, and in some cases even added in brand-new characters when converting her books into plays. Frances explained this change to readers by saying, “Between the lines of every story there is another story, and that is the one that is never heard and can only be guessed at by the people who are good at guessing.”

I can’t wait to see how this version “guesses” between the lines!

Was Frances a gardener herself? What was her favorite flower?

It’s interesting, while she had a lifetime love affair with flowers and gardens, she didn’t begin cultivating a garden of her own until she was almost 50 years old. And while she loved roses with a passion, even planting 672 rose bushes at just one of her homes, it was a lesser known flower with a heavenly scent that captured her heart and nose. She ordered large supplies of Mignonette seeds often, telling the head gardener to tucked them into all the bare spaces while proclaiming, “I want to have the scent of it all over the garden.’

It even made an appearance in The Secret Garden:

“…he (Dickon) grew borders of mignonette and pinks and pansies and things whose seeds he could save year after year…”

Here at An Enchanted Life, we’re always celebrating the simple things that make life more magical. What your favorite ways to create magic?

I think the best way to create magic is by planting seeds! The most magical thing to witness is a seed as it grows. The way it cracks open and pushes through the dirt to the light is nothing short of a miracle.

“And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.”

– The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett

But I don’t limit my seed planting to inside my (not so) Secret Garden. I plant seeds into my own heart each morning during my journal time. And I plant seeds of hope and love into others with smiles, hugs, and encouraging words.

To keep up with Keri and her celebration of Frances’s legacy, visit her website at: www.TheWell-TendedLife.com and Instagram at: instagram.com/thewelltendedlife