Burnett uses similes involving personification to make the reader feel that Colin Craven's mother is present in the "secret garden" even after her death. Through the "voice" of the narrator, the novel details several instances where the natural world takes on characteristics already attributed to Lilias Craven. For example, in Chapter 21 when Colin, Mary and Dickon all go into the "secret garden" together for the first time:
Between the blossoming branches of the canopy bits of blue sky looked down like wonderful eyes.
Colin and his mother, Burnett repeatedly tells the reader, have exactly the same "wonderful eyes," and so the sky's "looking down" takes on a tincture of her motherly influence. As the garden was Lilias Craven's own special place, the idea that her presence might linger there after death is aligned with the Spiritualist beliefs that recur in the novel. Being in a place associated with a dead loved one (or touching something of theirs) was a common element of the rituals some people in the 19th and 20th century performed to "speak" with the departed. When the children are in the garden, Lilias is not only a memory but is actually a personified presence, as the narrative uses figurative language to give the sky human-like qualities (and, specifically, Lilias's qualities).
