Every afternoon, when they came home from school, the children went to play in the Giant's garden.

It was a large, lovely garden with soft green grass. Here and there, beautiful flowers grew like stars in the grass. There were twelve peach trees. In the spring they were covered with delicate pink and white flowers, and in the autumn they gave rich fruit. The birds sat in the trees and sang so sweetly that the children stopped their games to listen. “How happy we are here!” they cried to each other.

One day the Giant came back. He had been away for seven years, visiting his friend, an ogre in Cornwall. When he arrived, he saw the children playing in his garden.

“What are you doing here?” he shouted in a very rough voice, and the children ran away.

“My own garden is my own garden,” said the Giant. “Everybody can understand that, and I will not let anybody play in it except myself.” So he built a high wall all around it and put up a sign:

TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

That means: “Anybody who comes in will be punished.” He was a very selfish Giant.

The poor children had nowhere to play now. They tried to play on the road, but the road was very dusty and full of hard stones, and they did not like it. After school, they walked around the high wall and talked about the beautiful garden inside. “How happy we were there,” they said.

Then the spring came, and all over the country there were little flowers and little birds. Only in the garden of the Selfish Giant it was still winter. The birds did not want to sing there because there were no children, and the trees forgot to flower. Once a beautiful flower put its head out of the grass, but when it saw the sign, it was so sorry for the children that it went back into the ground and went to sleep again.

The only ones who were happy were the Snow and the Frost. “Spring has forgotten this garden,” they cried, “so we will live here all year round.” The Snow covered the grass with her great white coat, and the Frost painted all the trees silver. Then they invited the North Wind to stay with them, and he came. Then they invited the Hail too. Every day for three hours, the Hail rattled on the roof of the castle and broke most of the windows.