The Secret Garden
Dickon Sowerby
The moor boy
Martha's cheerful younger brother, who knows every plant and animal on the moor and teaches Mary and Colin how to make a garden grow.
Dickon is Martha's brother and Susan Sowerby's son, a warm, earthy boy who lives on the moor with his large family. He is gentle and intuitive, and wild creatures come to his hand. He plays a wooden pipe, and robins, foxes and ponies follow him. He had made his own whistle by the age of five.
He is a steady, kind presence who never makes anyone feel small. He talks in broad Yorkshire, says there is nothing so nice as the smell of good fresh earth, and tells Mary that the whole world is waking up. For Mary and Colin, he is a teacher who never lectures. He never hurries, and he never talks down. When he explains how a seed will grow, he makes it sound like something wonderful that is about to happen to all of them.
“It's as wick as you or me! Look at the green juice inside!”
In the story
Contains spoilers.
Mary writes to Dickon to buy seeds and a spade with her saved allowance. He brings them himself, and she trusts him with the secret of the garden. He looks at the gray branches and declares them wick, meaning alive, and works with her to clear and plant.
He brings a lamb and a crow into Colin's room, pushes Colin's chair to the garden, and walks beside him when he takes his first steps. He is there for all the weeks of running, races and lessons, and at the end he stands with Colin and Mary when Archibald Craven finds them.
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