The work premiered in a concert version at Carnegie Hall in New York City on March 20, 1925, with the American National Orchestra conducted by Howard Barlow.

[3] Hawthorne's Gothic story about a doctor whose work with poisons has made his daughter's touch deadly has inspired several operas, including The Poisoned Kiss, or The Empress and the Necromancer (Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1936);' Rappaccini's Daughter (Margaret Garwood, 1980), and La hija de Rappaccini (Daniel Catán, 1991).

Hawthorne, the author of the original story; Eberhart, who transformed it into an opera libretto; and Cadman, the composer, all were born in America.

Francis D. Perkins of The New York Herald Tribune said the opera was "a hardly feasible libretto set to undistinguished music".

[14] William James Henderson of The New York Sun said "it is impossible to describe in critical terms such a sorry attempt.

"[15] Deems Taylor of The New York World said it was hard to judge the work itself from a performance that was "pretty bad".

[15] The New Yorker wrote "Mr. Cadman's work had not been in progress more than ten minutes before it became reasonably obvious that no history was being made.

The psychological story is undramatic and Mr. Cadman's ear-filling but uneventful music does not compensate for the lack of interest in the fable.

[18] The same review said Eberhart's libretto was done "with an eye to the literary quality rather than with an appreciation of dramatic values, a fatal thing to the success of opera, where action is necessary to hold the audience's interest".

[20] Soon after the premiere, Cadman observed that the "brutal" notices of an amateur performance for charity led "to its lack of success .

[21] Howard Perison said in 1982 that Garden was "a remarkable departure from Cadman's usual style, becoming at times chromatic and dissonant and employing unusual modal melodic patterns in an attempt to convey the sinister aspects of the story".

[6] The second performance of the opera was over WOR-AM and the CBS Radio Network's Pioneer Hour at 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time on May 7, 1928.

[24] The cast was Frank Croxton as Dr. Rappaccini, Elizabeth Lennox as Beatrice, Charles W. Harrison as Giovanni, Elise Thiede as Bianca, and Vernon Archibald as Enrico.

[28] Garden was given on a double bill with Lukas Foss's 1950 opera The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.

[30] "The opera has a hokey, incomprehensible libretto about a maniacal doctor, a poisonous plant and two pairs of ill-fated lovers.

"[31] The critic for Opera News was kinder, writing "Eberhart's libretto is needlessly obfuscatory: some members of the ACO cast were at a loss to explain what the story is about.

The score is something else: its enchanting, graceful vocal lines and heavily perfumed orchestration (Cadman possessed an uncanny gift for getting maximum sound from minimum forces) recall the more intimate pages of Richard Strauss and especially Delius.