Object
The Garden Door / Ivy Curtain
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
A door hidden under ivy keeps grief and spring behind the same wall.
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Place
Grand View Garden
Hung Lou Meng, or, The Dream of the Red Chamber, Book I, Cao Xueqin
A whole garden of lodges, bridges, and lanterns raised to welcome one daughter home.
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Place
Enchantress’s Garden
Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
A walled garden where one wife's craving becomes a debt paid in a child.
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Passage
The World Before Them
Paradise Lost, John Milton
Cast out forever, they must face grief, freedom, and an unknown human future.
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Passage
Blossoms Scatter Into Clay
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Omar Khayyam
How can beauty return each year while kings and common lives vanish forever?
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Place
The Storytelling Garden and Fountain
The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio
A garden fenced against the plague, where taking turns to tell tales holds a small world together.
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Place
Queen's garden and croquet-ground
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
The garden Alice longed for turns out to run on painted roses, living croquet tools, and casual death sentences.
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Object
Torn chestnut tree
Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, Charlotte Brontë
The night they promise themselves to each other, lightning splits the tree above them in two.
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Passage
Cupid’s Bolt and the Flower
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare
A harmless flower becomes a weapon that can hijack any heart's desire.
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Object
Friar Lawrence's herbs
Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare
The same small leaves can heal or kill, and the friar bets two lives on knowing which.
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Object
Boylan's Red Carnation
Ulysses, James Joyce
A red flower Boylan wears like a boast, announcing exactly what he wants.
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Passage
Ying Ning in the Tree
Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, Pu Songling
A hidden laugh turns Wang's curiosity into a thrilling, unsettling question about Ying-ning.
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Place
Rue Plumet garden
Les Misérables, Victor Hugo
Behind a wall, a hidden garden shelters young love and the men hunting it.
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Place
Villefort Garden / Lucern Patch
The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
A walled corner of green is all their love is allowed, and even that could be taken.
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Object
Evening-Face Flowers
The Tale of Genji, Murasaki Shikibu
White flowers on a poor fence draw Genji toward a love with nothing to protect it.
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Place
Bungalow Garden
The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling
Every rustle in the flowerbeds might be a bird, a mongoose, or a waiting cobra.
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Place
Laertes’s Orchard
The Odyssey, Homer
Among old trees and worked soil, Ulysses's return finally reaches his grieving father.
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Object
Violets
A Room with a View, E. M. Forster
A hillside of flowers where the life Lucy has kept guarded suddenly breaks open.
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Object
The Prison Rose-Bush
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
A wild rose grows beside the prison door, offering color where the law offers only iron.
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Passage
The Flowers and the Dream
The Time Machine, H. G. Wells
Proof of time travel survives, even as the Time Traveller fears his mind is breaking.
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Passage
Saving Grain For Seed
The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
One mistake in timing means years more hunger before he can taste bread.
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Passage
Lord Henry in the Studio
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
Before a single word is spoken, pleasure already hints at seduction and danger.
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Passage
Conversation by the Fish Pond
Quo Vadis, Henryk Sienkiewicz
In the garden's calm, Vinicius presses closer to the answer he longs for.
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Passage
Dissolved Into Something Complete
My Ántonia, Willa Cather
He discovers a happiness so complete it feels almost like disappearing forever.
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Object
Ophelia's Flowers / Garlands
Hamlet, William Shakespeare
Ophelia puts flowers in the hands of people who cannot safely answer what she means.
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Place
Kamala’s garden
Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
A garden where a courtesan teaches desire through beauty, patience, and control.
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Passage
Uncle Tom’s Cabin Garden
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
Can tenderness and pride survive in a home built beside another's power?
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Object
Red weed
The War of the Worlds, H. G. Wells
Alien vegetation floods England's rivers red, until Earth quietly rots it away.
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Place
Leonato's Garden
Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare
A garden where friends stage a lie kind enough to make two people admit they are in love.
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Place
Bly Grounds and Garden
The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
Pretty paths that invite a wander keep pulling the eye back toward the house.
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