A Girl’s Garden

A neighbor of mine in the village
Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
A childlike thing.

One day she asked her father
To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
And he said, "Why not?"

In casting about for a corner
He thought of an idle bit
Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
And he said, "Just it."

And he said, "That ought to make you
An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
On your slim-jim arm."

It was not enough of a garden
Her father said, to plow;
So she had to work it all by hand,
But she don't mind now.

She wheeled the dung in a wheelbarrow
Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
Her not-nice load,

And hid from anyone passing.
And then she begged the seed.
She says she thinks she planted one
Of all things but weed.

A hill each of potatoes,
Radishes, lettuce, peas,
Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,
And even fruit trees.

And yes, she has long mistrusted
That a cider-apple
In bearing there today is hers,
Or at least may be.

Her crop was a miscellany
When all was said and done,
A little bit of everything,
A great deal of none.

Now when she sees in the village
How village things go,
Just when it seems to come in right,
She says, "I know!

"It's as when I was a farmer..."
Oh never by way of advice!
And she never sins by telling the tale
To the same person twice.
(Meyer 366)

Robert Frost, 1916

Robert Frost’s poem, A Girl’s Garden tells the story of a girl who asks her father for some land of her own, to grow her own garden. The poem extols all she went through for her little plot, and how much it taught her of life. Frost uses form, imagery, and tone to create the pleasant mood, of this young girls life. Frost’s form of this poem, in which every other line rhymes, keeps the poem together and cohesive. It also reinforces the work the girl put into her garden. She had to plow and plant and tend all by hand, and with great care; just as Frost put great care and effort into the rhyme scheme of this poem. As Frost took care to set up the rhythm, he also set a great scene. The imagery in this poem reveals the garden and the girl toiling hard. The reader sees the girl wheeling her barrow of manure down the road and leaving it there. “She wheeled the dung in a wheelbarrow Along a stretch of road; But she always ran away and left Her not-nice load,” (Meyer 366)
They see her plant each seed, and watch the sprouts grow. Frost does not put more words than necessary into this, just enough, for the imagery to grow in the mind of the reader. The tone of the poem is soft, yet pensive. Despite the difficult structure, the words are simple, as a young girls would be. This gives the feeling of a calm innocence. There is no dramatic emotion. Even so, as the reader reaches the end of the poem, he realizes that the garden was more than just a garden. It was also a teaching ground. One can always get more out of an activity than just what meets the eye.