The Keller home was known as Ivy Green.
When Helen was young, she lived with her family in a very small house on the family land. She explains that it was the custom for the family to do this, building a little house she calls an annex neat the homestead “to be used on occasion.” Her father built the house and moved in there with her mother before she was born.
The Keller homestead, where the family lived, was a few steps from our little rose-bower. It was called "Ivy Green" because the house and the surrounding trees and fences were covered with beautiful English ivy. Its old-fashioned garden was the paradise of my childhood. (Ch. 1)
Helen Keller was not born blind or deaf. This was the result of an illness as a young child. She remembered her childhood cabin and wandering around the Keller homestead. Even at that age, she valued nature.
But the roses--they were loveliest of all. Never have I found in the greenhouses of the North such heart-satisfying roses as the climbing roses of my southern home. (Ch. 1)
Nature is one of the ways that Anne Sullivan, Helen's teacher, was able to get through to her. Helen loved wandering around the land, and even if she could not see or hear she could experience the land with her other senses. Helen loved flowers and you can still enjoy them when you are blind. Smell is one of the strongest senses. Helen had very good memories of wandering the Keller land smelling the flowers.
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