“The Whole World is a Garden”

At the top of the grand staircase—with its glorious, over-the-top frescoes stretching floor to ceiling—you turn right into the first bedroom.

The walls are original pine ship-lap, and across them, painted directly on the shellacked wood—blooms a quiet riot of daisies and dragonflies. They’re some of several remarkable frescos throughout the house. We know they were painted during the Fleischmann years, and we suspect they may have been done by scenic artists from the Metropolitan Opera. (Learn more about Spillian’s history here!)

When I first walked into this room, it felt like a little secret garden. It’s perched just over the front portico, slightly set apart from the others. Quiet. Self-contained. Tucked into its own corner of the house. There’s a window seat in the bay, piled with cushions, just right for curling up with a book—or dreaming a garden of your own.

So we followed its lead.

We named the room after The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 novel about a hidden walled garden, three lonely children, and the slow unfolding of joy and healing through friendship, mystery, and the wild beauty of nature. It was one of the lodestars of my childhood. I read it so often I can still recite whole passages. My copy, with its iconic Tasha Tudor illustrations, lives in an antique bookcase in my bedroom—still-beloved, its cover soft with use, its spine a little loose from being held so many times. Loved enough to show it.

“Everything is Made Out of Magic”

We furnished the room with that kind of story in mind. There’s a 19th-century rattan wheelchair—Colin’s, perhaps—near the fireplace, which now glows gently with warmth. A pair of peacock lamps catch the light just right. And the bay window, with its seat and pillows, invites reading, dreaming, remembering.

And like all of Spillian’s eight bedrooms, it holds a journal on the bedside table. Guests leave sketches and poems. Love stories. The occasional ghost story. Fragments of wonder. A living archive of what this place stirs in people, one page at a time.

“A Garden Began to Grow”

But the Secret Garden Room is more than a guestroom. It was the first bedroom we imagined into Spillian. It began the tradition of naming each bedroom after the stories, music, and adventures that shaped us—and that the Fleischmanns themselves, with their Edwardian love of exploration and beauty, might well have cherished.

Each room since has been given its own story, its own spell. Together, they form a kind of living anthology of imagination, curiosity, and play.

In The Secret Garden Mary realized, “However many years she lived, she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow.”

This was the first bedroom we imagined into Spillian.
It began to grow a house of stories that we never forget.
And maybe, for a little while, it will grow something in you, too.

If you’re curious to go deeper into the house, stay tuned—we’re opening the doors, one by one, to each of Spillian’s eight guest rooms. Every room holds a tale. Here’s where we began…

See you there!

Leigh Melander, PhD
Spllian Co-Founder/Partner