Bea Rivers has had three years to settle into her new role as the executive director of Shandley Gardens. She loves the job even if it sometimes interferes with raising her family. Out of the blue she is invited by an old college friend, Paige Pearson, to attend an intimate botanical garden conference at the seaside La Jolla Gardens in exclusive La Jolla, California. Bea decides to attend and convinces her friend Lila Busby, who just became the director of a garden in New Mexico, to attend...

Bea Rivers' new job at Shandley Gardens seems to be idyllic; a stimulating career at a desert garden full of botanical wonders. But a slow rot has spread within Shandley Gardens as financial woes add stress to the small board of directors, putting Bea's job at risk. When one of the Gardens' founders, Liz Shandley, is killed in what appears to be a tragic accident, the immediate worry is the survival of the Gardens. But then the police determine that Liz was murdered, and suddenly Bea's job...

A gardener digs up an old skeleton in the "back forty" of Shandley Gardens, a public garden in the Sonoran Desert. Volunteer coordinator Bea Rivers discovers that the victim, a man who disappeared in 1969, may be connected to a small town in New Mexico, where he'd made quite a few enemies among amateur archaeologists. There may be some connection with illegal artifacts... and with Shandley Gardens' founders. As Bea is drawn into the investigation, she meets an ever-increasing cast of quirk...