When Charles Ives was 18 or 19 he wrote this pleasant and fairly inconsequential song. The form of the text suggests that it was the octet of a sonnet, but if so, the identity of the whole poem, as well as its author, is unknown. Our best information as to the date of its composition is Ives' own notation (not always a reliable guide) that it was written in 1893.

This is a song of genteel Victorian sentiment. The "certain garden" of the song's title and incipit is described as a paradise of a place where birds forever sing and snows never fall. The song goes on to explain that the garden exists only in "my memory," where the poet "loved my first love long ago." The tempo is rapid and scherzo-like at the start, in 4/4 time. This description prevails during the whole description of the garden. The song slows into 3/4 time and the piano texture changes where the singer raises the question of the location of the garden. The texture again changes and the meter returns to 4/4 (but without an indication of a gain in speed) where the existence of the garden in memory only is revealed.

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