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Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Mr. Wyatt’s Garden

Mr. Wyatt’s garden is a nod to the novel’s title and is a symbol of Mav’s growth. It is not easy to make a garden flourish, as Mav learns when Mr. Wyatt hires him to work in his. The labor is hard, the learning curve is steep, and the pay is meager. The people in Mav’s world who seek honest work know that this is true of any endeavor, Mr. Wyatt most of all. As a master gardener, Mr. Wyatt takes Mav firmly in hand to make sure that he plants the seeds for his future as he tends the roses and other plants.

Mr. Wyatt also ensures that Mav knows his efforts will be worthwhile, although Mav cannot see far enough in the future to imagine it. Planting a garden requires a leap of faith that it will endure pests, weather, and other threats. It is also a testament to a gardener’s faith and self-belief in their abilities. A gardener must know how to make the right plans and have the stamina to execute them. Mav finally sees the reward for his efforts when he sees the roses bloom.

Roses

Like Mr. Wyatt’s garden, roses symbolize growth in unlikely places. When Mav helps Mr. Wyatt plant roses on his first day of work, he’s shocked to see what looks to him like a bunch of twigs. The roses don’t seem like they’re ever going to grow into beautiful bushes with fragrant flowers. This mirrors how Mav sees himself for much of the novel. Though several people, like Mr. Wyatt, Lisa, and Faye, insist that Mav can blossom just like the roses, be something great and grow up to do amazing things with his life, Mav finds it as difficult to see this potential in himself as he does in those bunches of twigs.

Although Mav doesn’t believe the roses are going to do well, he follows Mr. Wyatt’s instructions on how to care for them, including pruning away everything that isn’t going to help them grow. Mr. Wyatt tells Mav it’s important for people to do the same thing. Throughout the novel, Mav puts this advice into practice, and eventually cuts dealing and his former best friend, King, out of his life.

When Mav cuts the negative influences and enters the garden to find the roses in full bloom, he realizes that Mr. Wyatt was right to have faith in them. Even though it’s the middle of winter, roses can handle more than most people think and can overcome even the most difficult of circumstances to become beautiful. The roses show Mav that he should believe in his resilience and potential for success.

Evergreen Prison

Evergreen Prison looms over Mav’s life and is a reminder of how his life could careen out of control if he doesn’t make better decisions. Despite its verdant name, Evergreen Prison is a place where little flourishes. It’s a “garden” that doesn’t support germination and growth. The prison is in a tiny, predominantly white town, surrounded by fields. It feels like a plantation and even seems to function like one where the prisoners, who are mostly Black, tend the fields. When Mav visits Adonis in the prison, there is no escaping the fact that his father’s life choices have rooted him firmly in the present and between its walls. Mav and Faye are free to make the journey there at their discretion, and if the visit becomes heated, they can choose to step away. Mav’s visits to his father give him the much-needed motivation to correct the course of his life and avoid ending up in the prison.

Even in this restrictive place, though, Adonis is eventually able to get through to his son and be the father that he needs to be. It takes time, but time is the one thing that prison offers. Adonis is an unwitting protagonist in Mav’s story, and when he discovers his own strengths, it allows him to help his son grow. Like the trees that the prison is named for, Adonis has been there all along.

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