Little Mary Lennox, raised in India by servants and left alone in the world after a cholera epidemic, is sent to live with an uncle she has never met in a nearly empty mansion on the edge of the Yorkshire moors. Spoiled and self-absorbed, Mary soon finds that the mansion is not so empty as it seems at first and gradually learns that world does not revolve around her, and is filled with wonderful living things and people who can become friends.

Locked away behind a wall Mary discovers the Secret Garden, abandoned and neglected, and with the help of Dickon, a local boy as at home with the wildlife and plants of the moor as with the livestock and garden of his family's small farm, she begins to tend the garden. And as the garden begins to recover and bloom with the spring, so too does Mary, finding the meaning of friendship and the warmth of human companionship.

The most remarkable transformation, though, is the change that comes over her cousin Colin, sickly and feeble, hidden away from the world in his private room and expecting death. First through the companionship, and later the friendship, of Mary, and then through the "magic" of the garden, Colin too learns that the world, and the people living in it, can be wondrous things.

An inspirational and uplifting story, "The Secret Garden" is generally considered one the 100 best children's books, and imparts a message of the inherent power, and will, of all living things to thrive and the need for each individual to realize the importance and value of the natural world, and the people, around them.