The garden which was nearly all grass and posessing only a few stunted thorns and shrubs and a few currant bushes which Emily and Anne treasured as their bit of fruit garden, is now a perfect arcadia of floral culture and beauty.

The garden's designer Tracy Foster notes the absence of any detailed references to gardening in Charlotte's letters to friends – the most informative part of the Bronte Society's archive. Andrew Denton of Welcome to Yorkshire says:

She did not discuss gardening or the garden with her lifelong friend Ellen Nussey – and she would have done if it was a part of her life which had strong meaning. It is fascinating, given the sisters' love of the landscape that surrounded them and which provided so much escape and inspiration. Charlotte was a very adept painter of flowers too, but it seems she took little interest in trying to grow her own.

One passage in Nussey's Reminiscences of 1871, reprinted in Early Visitors to Haworth also goes further than the negative evidence of gardening failing to feature in the sisters' papers.

The Parsonage is quite another habitation now from the Parsonage of earlier days. The garden which was nearly all grass and posessing only a few stunted thorns and shrubs and a few currant bushes which Emily and Anne treasured as their bit of fruit garden, is now a perfect arcadia of floral culture and beauty.

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