To tell a patient they are about to die is never the easiest of tasks. When the patient is thirty-five, a woman and exceptionally beautiful, the task is even harder.

In the winter of 1934 Nancy Leigh Cameron learns that she has only one more year to live. She is famous, sought-after, and living a life of deep inner loneliness. Her husband, Senator Jack Cameron, is cold and self-seeking. He needs Nancy because she can help him to become President. Her father, Chips O'Shaughnessy, ebullient Irish mayor of Boston, loves Nancy, but also needs her socially desirable marriage to last so that he can further his own career.

When Nancy learns that she is to die she decides that she will live her last year for herself. Leaving New York for the exclusive hotel of Sanfords on the flower-filled island of Madeira, she embarks on the love affair of a lifetime. She has no idea that Ramon Sanford, the man she loves, is her father's bitterest enemy, and that their passion will unlock dark family secrets and tragedies that have lain buried for more than a generation.

Set in the 1930s The Flower Garden is a grand love story in the tradition of Brief Encounter and An Affair to Remember.