Shen Luoyan woke to find herself an orphan in a farming family outside Chang'an, with nothing but half an acre of poor farmland and a few nearly dead peonies.
In the prosperous Tang dynasty, the peony had yet to become the national flower, and most people preferred peach and plum blossoms. Clutching a flower manual passed down by her ancestors, she turned wasteland into a flower garden amid the mockery of those around her, grafting and forcing blooms with methods from a later age. In the chill of early spring, she cultivated the cold-resistant "Red Snow Reflected"; in the height of summer, she raised the rare "Green Jade Plate." Even the palace painters stopped to admire her peonies.
From a country girl selling flowers at the market to a gardener who caught a noble consort's attention, she used a single flower to make peonies bloom throughout the streets and alleys of Chang'an. But why did that aloof young gentleman who often came to buy flowers always quietly offer her a clean handkerchief while she was pruning?
Half an acre of flowers, a lifetime of beauty. The peonies she cultivated in the Tang dynasty were far from all she would grow.
