Secret Garden

The word out of New York is that they're busy pruning the ghosts from The Secret Garden. I suppose that's a good idea. The ghosts - the shades of little Mary Lennox's long-dead aunt, wife to her gloomy Uncle Archie, and of all the adults who died in the cholera epidemic that made Mary an orphan and brought her to England - probably were baffling to small children. And small children are a large part of the potential audience for this just-opened show at the St. James Theater, which has been adapted by librettist Marsha Norman and composer Lucy Simon from the classic children's novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Imagine this: A sour, spoiled little girl comes to live in a dreary old mansion. She finds a pretty garden and begins to take an interest in things. She befriends a cheery little fellow who has squirrels and other animals for friends, and her attitude improves even more. Then she comes across a crippled, tyrannical, sick little boy. She and her new buddy get him into the garden and - surprise! - he learns to walk. Would anyone in his right mind buy this saccharine, nauseatingly predictable tale?

Tucked away down a narrow Old City alley, the garden patio behind Wedge + Fig is one of the loveliest local pocket hideaways in which to while away the last warm days over panini and salad. Formerly a cheese shop (and a bakery before that), this light-bite boutique from one-time sailmakers Kirk Nelson and Lisa Ruff features the culinary talents of Rebecca Torpie, the former chef-owner of Flying Monkey. There are baked goods reminiscent of her cupcake days (lemon bars, macaroons)

Growing up in Poland, Agnieszka Holland read Frances Hodgson Burnett's turn-of-the-century children's classic, The Secret Garden. And read it again, and again. "And then, when my daughter was the right age, I read it to her, and I remembered the book very, very well," recalls the filmmaker, who makes her Hollywood studio debut with The Secret Garden, which opened around the country Friday. "And when I read the first version of this script, I could immediately find what was not accurate.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - The kitchen features a hutch with lovely antique blue-and-white plates. One bathroom has a walk-in shower. And lounge chairs surround a good-sized shaded pool in the back. So what makes this seven-bedroom property different from other large homes nearby? It's South Florida's first gay retirement home. Tom Duffy, a retired catering business owner, converted what once was a small Wilton Manors assisted-living facility to create his dream: Secret Garden, an independent living center where gay men can be themselves as they age. "I want it to be like a family, more like a commune, I guess," said Duffy, 61, who lives on the property and has been interviewing prospective residents in recent weeks.

I don't think they've got The Secret Garden clarified just yet. "No, no, they're all dead people," a woman patiently explained to her male companion during opening-night intermission at the Playhouse Theatre, where the Marsha Norman-Lucy Simon musical is in residence through Saturday. She meant the ghosts that drift in and out of Norman's adaptation of the 1911 Frances Hodgson Burnett novel - specters that troubled the original Broadway production and, despite extensive revisions in the interim, haunt the road company as well.

In shimmering lacy gowns, ghosts of the dead waltz across the stage, while their survivors sing mournfully of how much they are missed. Meanwhile, a sourpuss of a little girl, with some help from a Yorkshire-speaking robin, a country boy named Dickon and a curmudgeonly older servant, slowly nurses a garden back to life. If The Secret Garden, a musical tale of loss and recovery, is not exactly action-packed, that's no accident, one member of its all-female creative team explained recently.

On a gray day in January, the moment has come to unlock the garden gate. Director, conductor, designer and singers with scores in hand gather in an empty Chestnut Street storefront to breathe life into The Secret Garden, an opera that has been gestating for three years in a process devised by the Pennsylvania Opera Theater (TPOT). The singers sit in a semicircle with coffee cups and tape recorders ranged in front of them. Stage-staff members take notes as director Michael Montel talks the singers through scenes and acts while designer Anita Stewart, working a scale model of the stage, shows where shrubs and trees will stand, where bed and table, garden doors and stairs will be - and where glasses of water may be hidden for the singers during performance.

When devoted gardeners run out space in their backyards, they often tear up the old plantings to make room for the new. But Andrew Bunting, a horticulturist with a magazine-worthy ornamental garden behind his ivy-covered stone cottage in Swarthmore, had a different idea. In January, he asked neighbors Clair and Rob Oaks, with whom he had a cordial but not close relationship, if he could use a section of their backyard for a vegetable garden that they would share. He would design, install, and cultivate the plot, and even pay them $100 a month in rent.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - The kitchen features a hutch with lovely antique blue-and-white plates. One bathroom has a walk-in shower. And lounge chairs surround a good-sized shaded pool in the back. So what makes this seven-bedroom property different from other large homes nearby? It's South Florida's first gay retirement home. Tom Duffy, a retired catering business owner, converted what once was a small Wilton Manors assisted-living facility to create his dream: Secret Garden, an independent living center where gay men can be themselves as they age. "I want it to be like a family, more like a commune, I guess," said Duffy, 61, who lives on the property and has been interviewing prospective residents in recent weeks.

My yard is barely visible from the sidewalk, thanks to a snaggle of untamed evergreens atop a four-foot-high retaining wall. But behind that ragged urban barrier, the property opens out onto a surprising double-lot expanse of serpentine flowerbeds, an oasis of hammocks and bluestone patios, cedar pergolas and grassy terraces. An oversized cast-iron smoker hugs the fence line (on standby for twice yearly pig roasts), and the parking pad in front of the garage has been known to serve as a temporary abattoir, which is a nice word for describing what happens when my husband takes a Sawzall to the deer he gets from bow hunter culls of nearby parks.

When devoted gardeners run out space in their backyards, they often tear up the old plantings to make room for the new. But Andrew Bunting, a horticulturist with a magazine-worthy ornamental garden behind his ivy-covered stone cottage in Swarthmore, had a different idea. In January, he asked neighbors Clair and Rob Oaks, with whom he had a cordial but not close relationship, if he could use a section of their backyard for a vegetable garden that they would share. He would design, install, and cultivate the plot, and even pay them $100 a month in rent.

Lisa Butler has herself quite a haul: six mums, two asters, one anemone, and two pumpkins, all chosen from the attractive seasonal displays at Secret Garden, the Roxborough plant nursery near her Andorra home. "I love my mums," she says. "They're a beautiful fall flower. " And you can't miss them these days. The breeding and mass-marketing of fall garden-variety mums, begun in the 1980s, has reached the saturation point in 2011. You'll find them for as little as $2 apiece, not just at garden centers and big-box stores, but at supermarkets, discount outlets, seasonal pop-ups, and gas stations, too. Here's why: Mums provide one of the only blasts of color for the year-end garden.

Tucked away down a narrow Old City alley, the garden patio behind Wedge + Fig is one of the loveliest local pocket hideaways in which to while away the last warm days over panini and salad. Formerly a cheese shop (and a bakery before that), this light-bite boutique from one-time sailmakers Kirk Nelson and Lisa Ruff features the culinary talents of Rebecca Torpie, the former chef-owner of Flying Monkey. There are baked goods reminiscent of her cupcake days (lemon bars, macaroons)

The Camden County Technical School in Gloucester Township appears to be a regular campus of bricks and mortar, but behind the school lies a secret garden the public may not know about. Now through mid-June, the public is invited into this secret world to partake of the beauty of carefully cultivated gardens, whose paths lead to waterfalls that drop into ponds filled with freshwater fish. Wild animals, such as white-tailed deer, red fox, red squirrels and nonpoisonous snakes, make their homes in a wildlife area in a far corner.

Welkin is old English for dome of heaven; weir means body of water. Put them together, and you have some idea of the panorama at Welkinweir, the 197-acre estate and public garden in northern Chester County. This truly is "where sky meets water," a big picture window of a place whose beauty rivals any of the region's other historic mansions, arboretums, wildlife habitats and gardens. So how come it's such a secret? After about a decade of being open for guided group tours, Welkinweir draws only a few thousand visitors a year.

Welkin is old English for dome of heaven; weir means body of water. Put them together, and you have some idea of the panorama at Welkinweir, the 197-acre estate and public garden in northern Chester County. This truly is "where sky meets water," a big picture window of a place whose beauty rivals any of the region's other historic mansions, arboretums, wildlife habitats and gardens. So how come it's such a secret? After about a decade of being open for guided group tours, Welkinweir draws only a few thousand visitors a year.

Imagine you have a fever that won't go away. You call your doctor, who says, "Take some bloodroot and call me in the morning. " Could have happened in the 18th century, except there were no telephones and few trained doctors. But there was bloodroot, which people took for fever and rheumatism, as well as hundreds of other herbs to treat everything from toothaches and syphilis to head colds and snake bites. That golden age of herbal medicine has been recreated in the charming Physic Garden at Pennsylvania Hospital, founded in 1751 as the nation's first hospital by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Bond.

When children's author/illustrator Lynne Cherry decided to write a picture book about a tree in the rain forest that affects many lives, she didn't just sit down and start painting scenes based on other people's descriptions. She headed off to Brazil, trekking into the Amazon rain forest to learn about it firsthand. "For all my books, I travel to the place I'm writing about," says Cherry, a graduate of Temple University's Tyler School of Art. "The feel of the place, the smell, the texture . . . somehow it comes out in the illustrations.