The Rose Garden in The Drowning Kind: Symbol of Order, Memory, and Control

The Rose Garden as a Cultivated Counterweight to the Pool

The rose garden at Sparrow Crest is the novel’s most deliberate piece of human-made order, a geometric counterpoint to the wild, sulfurous pool that dominates the property. Where the pool is described as “a huge, unblinking pupil” and “a black mirror” (Chapter Seven), the garden is laid out in “concentric circles, with paths and a small gazebo at the center walled with rose trellises” (Chapter Seventeen). Its edges are lined with “perfectly symmetrical fist-sized white rocks” that Lexie called “moon rocks,” and its beds are planted with named varieties—Aurora, Snow Queen, Maiden’s Blush—that Gram could rattle off from memory. This is a space designed to be controlled, measured, and maintained, in stark opposition to the pool’s bottomless, unpredictable depths.

The garden’s literal history ties it to the hotel era. Shirley’s scrapbook shows the hotel’s “fountain surrounded by flowers” and peacocks roaming the grounds (Chapter Twenty-Three), and the brochure that first draws Ethel and Will to Brandenburg promises “immaculate gardens” (Chapter Two). The roses themselves are older than Gram, planted when the hotel first opened, making the garden a living archive of the property’s past. When Jackie and her father prune the garden in Chapter Twenty-Nine, Ted guesses that “your great-grandmother and grandmother didn’t make many changes,” and the garden likely looks much as it did in the hotel days. The garden thus functions as a physical memory bank, holding the site’s history in its roots and blooms.

Recurrence and Transformation Across Time

The garden appears at key moments in both the historical and contemporary timelines, and its condition tracks the larger arc of the story. In 1929, when Ethel first visits the hotel, the garden is in full glory: Eliza Harding invites Ethel to sit with her among the roses and shares stories of the springs’ healing powers (Chapter Six). The garden is a place of confidences and wishes, where Eliza urges Ethel to make a wish that will lead to her daughter’s birth. By 1930, after the hotel has burned and the springs have become a source of dread, the garden has “gone wild” (Chapter Twenty-Six). Ethel fears something in the gazebo and spots a peacock at the woods’ edge—a feral remnant of the hotel’s cultivated menagerie. The garden’s decline mirrors the loss of human control over the supernatural forces the springs have unleashed.

In 1931, when the Monroes move to Sparrow Crest, workmen clear the hotel ruins but leave the rose garden intact (Chapter Twenty-Eight). This preservation suggests an attempt to hold onto the past’s beauty even as the family builds a new house beside the dangerous pool. By 1936, the garden is again a site of planned domesticity: Ethel plans a “special picnic in the rose garden with fancy dresses and strawberry tarts” for Maggie (Chapter Thirty-Two), a fragile attempt to create normalcy in a life increasingly dictated by the water’s demands.

In the contemporary timeline, the garden is overgrown but still flourishing. Jax and Ryan walk through it in Chapter Seventeen, noting the weeds and bug holes but also the garden’s vitality. Jackie and Ted spend an afternoon pruning in Chapter Twenty-Nine, and the act becomes a way for Jackie to connect with her family’s legacy. The garden’s persistence—through fire, neglect, and supernatural horror—makes it a symbol of endurance, but also of the futility of trying to impose order on a place that resists it.

Symbolic Meanings: Order, Memory, and Control

The garden’s primary symbolic function is as a counterweight to the pool’s chaos. The pool is a natural spring, fed by underground currents, bottomless, and associated with death, wishes, and malevolent forces. The garden is artificial, shaped by human hands, with its concentric circles and symmetrical rocks suggesting a desire to impose geometry on a landscape that refuses to be tamed. This contrast is explicit in the novel’s structure: the garden is a place of light, scent, and social interaction, while the pool is dark, cold, and isolating.

The garden also represents memory. Its roses are older than the house, planted when the hotel first opened, and they carry the history of the Hardings, the fire, and the drownings. When Jackie and Ted prune, they are literally tending to that history, deciding what to keep and what to cut away. Lexie’s wish that “the roses could speak and tell stories” (Chapter Twenty-Nine) underscores the garden’s role as a silent witness to the family’s secrets. The garden holds the past in a way the pool does not—the pool erases and transforms, while the garden preserves, albeit imperfectly.

Control is the garden’s most fraught meaning. The act of pruning, deadheading, and shaping is an attempt to manage the unruly, to keep the supernatural at bay. But the garden’s overgrowth in the modern era suggests that control is always slipping. Even when Jackie and Ted work to restore it, they are aware that the garden is “overgrown” and that the roses need “pruning and deadheading” (Chapter Seventeen). The garden’s wildness mirrors the characters’ inability to control the water’s pull, whether it is Lexie’s obsession, Ethel’s fear, or Jackie’s own near-drowning. The garden is a site of labor that never fully succeeds, much like the characters’ attempts to manage their inherited trauma.

Character Connections

The garden is intimately tied to several characters. Eliza Harding, who created and tended it, uses it as a place to share the springs’ secrets with Ethel, and her death by drowning makes her a spectral presence in both the pool and the garden. Ethel, who first encounters the garden as a hopeful visitor, later fears it as the site of her daughter’s dependence on the water. Jackie’s pruning in Chapter Twenty-Nine is a moment of connection with her father and her past, as she decides whether to keep Sparrow Crest. Lexie, who believed in the water’s magic, also saw the garden as a storytelling entity, wishing it could speak. Gram, who taught the girls the names of each rose, treated the garden as a living curriculum, passing down its history.

The garden also connects to the theme of family secrets. Shirley’s scrapbook reveals that the hotel’s gardens were part of a facade of elegance that hid the fire and drownings. The garden’s beauty is a mask for the horror beneath, just as the family’s domestic rituals—picnics, pruning, Friday dinners—mask the supernatural forces that have shaped their lives.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the rose garden function as a symbol of order in contrast to the pool?

The garden is deliberately structured—concentric circles, symmetrical rocks, a central gazebo—while the pool is described as bottomless, dark, and chaotic. The garden is a human-made space designed for control and beauty, whereas the pool is a natural spring that resists human intervention. The garden’s order represents the characters’ attempts to impose meaning and safety on a landscape that is fundamentally unpredictable and dangerous.

2. What does the garden’s overgrowth in the modern timeline signify?

The overgrowth suggests the failure of human control over the supernatural. Despite Jackie and Ted’s pruning, the garden remains wild, with weeds and bug holes. This mirrors the characters’ inability to contain the water’s influence, whether through Lexie’s research, Ethel’s fear, or the family’s attempts to move on. The garden’s persistence despite neglect also hints at the enduring power of the past.

3. How does the garden serve as a site of memory?

The roses are older than the house, planted when the hotel first opened, making the garden a living archive of the property’s history. Characters like Gram and Shirley use the garden to recall the past, and Lexie wishes the roses could speak. The garden preserves the memory of the hotel, the fire, and the drownings, even as the pool erases and transforms.

4. What does Jackie’s act of pruning represent in Chapter Twenty-Nine?

Pruning is a deliberate act of care and control. Jackie and Ted shape the bushes, deadhead, and trim runners, symbolizing an attempt to manage the family’s legacy. The act also becomes a way for Jackie to connect with her father and decide whether to keep Sparrow Crest. It represents her effort to impose order on a chaotic inheritance, even as she recognizes that the garden—like the family—cannot be fully tamed.

The Garden’s Place in the Novel’s Thematic Web

The rose garden is not merely a backdrop but a dynamic symbol that evolves with the story. It embodies the tension between human desire for order and the uncontrollable forces of nature and the supernatural. Its recurrence across decades ties together the novel’s themes of the price of wishes and miracles, water as a living, malevolent force, and family secrets and inherited trauma. The garden’s beauty and decay reflect the characters’ struggles with the blurring of reality and delusion and the pull of the dead.

For Jackie, the garden is a place of memory and decision; for Ethel, it is a site of hope and later fear; for Eliza, it is a legacy that outlives her. The garden’s persistence—through fire, neglect, and supernatural horror—makes it a symbol of endurance, but also of the futility of trying to impose order on a place that resists it. In the end, the garden stands as a quiet counterpoint to the pool, a reminder that even the most careful cultivation cannot hold back the dark water that waits beneath.