Major Cuthbertson stumbles across a body among the fragrant tomato plants. A bloody spade lies next to the face-down victim.

Ruth Harvey has taken over the manor in Frog End, where she runs a successful plant-selling business and provides gardening therapy for some of her husband Dr Tom Harvey's troubled patients. They include embittered Lawrence Deacon, lonely Joyce Reed, widowed Tanya Carberry and wheelchair-bound Johnny Turner, the young victim of a horrific motorbike crash.

Now murder threatens to destroy everything. Can the Colonel solve the crime before anyone else suffers?