One day the Giant returned after seven years away visiting a friend. When he saw the children playing, he shouted angrily, and they all ran away terrified. He built a tall wall around the garden and put up a sign warning that trespassers would be prosecuted. He was a selfish Giant, and he wanted the garden all to himself. The children had nowhere else to play, so they wandered sadly around the wall each afternoon, longing for the place they loved.
As spring came to the land, flowers blossomed everywhere except inside the Giant’s garden, where winter still lingered. Snow covered the grass with her cold white cloak, Frost painted the trees silver, and the North Wind roared through the branches day and night. They invited Hail to join them, and he pounded the roof until tiles cracked. Because the children were gone, the garden became trapped in endless winter. The Giant did not understand why spring never came and grew lonely and frustrated as every season passed him by.
One morning the Giant awoke to the sound of a small linnet singing outside his window. It was the sweetest sound he had heard in years. Hail stopped spinning, the North Wind quieted, and a gentle fragrance drifted through the air. When the Giant looked outside, he saw an astonishing sight. The children had slipped through a hole in the wall, and they were sitting in the branches of the trees. The trees bloomed joyfully under their touch, birds fluttered around them, and flowers peeked up from the grass. Spring had finally returned because the children had returned.
But in one far corner of the garden winter remained, and a small boy stood beneath a tree too tiny to climb. He walked around the trunk crying, and the tree bent down trying to help him. Snow and Frost clung to its branches, and the North Wind blew fiercely above it. Seeing the boy’s tears, the Giant’s heart melted for the first time. He realized how selfish he had been and decided to help. He stepped quietly outside, but the children ran away in fear, and winter swept back over the garden. Only the little boy stayed because he was crying too hard to notice anything else.
The Giant gently picked him up and placed him on the branch, and instantly the tree blossomed, birds sang, and the boy smiled brightly. The child wrapped his arms around the Giant’s neck and kissed him, and in that moment the Giant knew he had changed forever. The children returned, spring poured back into the garden, and the Giant declared that it now belonged to them. He tore down the wall, and from then on people saw him playing with the children every afternoon. His garden became the happiest place in the land.
Years passed, and the Giant grew old. He could no longer join the games, so he watched from his chair while the children played among the trees. He loved them all, but he always wondered about the little boy he had helped that first day, the one he never saw again. He longed deeply for the boy’s return, though no one knew where the child lived.
One winter morning he looked outside and saw a dazzling sight. In the far corner stood a tree covered in pure white blossoms, with silver fruit hanging from golden branches. Beneath it stood the little boy he had missed for so many years. Overcome with joy, the Giant rushed toward him, but then stopped in shock. The boy had nail marks on his hands and feet. Furious, the Giant demanded to know who had hurt him, promising to take revenge with his strongest sword.
But the boy smiled and said these were the marks of Love. A deep awe came over the Giant, and he knelt before the child. The boy told him that because he once allowed him to play in his garden, it was now the Giant’s turn to come to the boy’s garden, which was Heaven.
That afternoon the children came running as usual, but they found the Giant lying peacefully under the white-blossomed tree. He had died, finally at peace, surrounded by the beauty he once tried to keep for himself.