Melania Bridge, a botanical researcher involved in compiling an important herbal with all the tropical species, accepts an invitation from Irina Lariovna, an illustrious colleague who has chosen to live in a dilapidated villa immersed in a labyrinth where rare and very aggressive plants flourish undisturbed. A plant nightmare with a complex and provocative beauty that creeps into the soul of whoever enters it. In this incredibly singular place, permeated with romantic nostalgia, Irina lives with two others: Miss Prugineim, a bony housekeeper of indefinite sex with a sculptured hairdo and Esteban, the sweet, helpful and exceptionally attractive young gardener. Melania, entranced by the magnificent garden, as well as the gardener’s exuberant eruption of muscles, decides to prolong her visit in order to include in her collection, and why not, the new species Irina cultivates. But day after day, amidst the five o’clock tea punctually served in the Frogs Drawing Room, brilliant dissertations, not only about botany, and the battles engaged with reaping hooks against the increasingly aggressive ivy, that thriving and lethal Eden begins to whisper its fatal secret. In a completely female way, Alessandro Fullin moves his heroines between surreal, bucolic settings and heart breaking passions. This is a surprising novel, with a vein of humour and dazzling aphorisms, and precious as a Liberty frieze, in which the atmosphere of yester year tells about completely contemporary unease.