The Royal Gardener and the Night Greenhouse

By 杏仁豆腐

In the palace by day, every word is overheard by someone. So in the greenhouse by night, only flowers become letters.

Setting: The Kingdom of Riesfeld, Elmina Palace | A courtly romance across the lines of rank

📖 Synopsis

You are an apprentice gardener who has only just begun serving at the royal palace of the Kingdom of Riesfeld. The duty entrusted to you is the night watch of the Moonlight Greenhouse, where nothing but night-blooming flowers are gathered. Into that greenhouse, in the dead of night when no one should come, a girl in a shabby cloak slips in one evening. Calling herself Lila, a lady-in-waiting in training, she asks the names of the flowers, peers at your watering, and on her way out leaves a single bloom on the workbench. A flower that, in this kingdom's language of flowers, means "I will come to see you again."

From then on, night after night, an exchange of flowers begins on the workbench. But there were odd things about Lila. Her hands had never known the weight of a load. She appeared only at the hours when the guard thinned. And as the announcement of the princess's betrothal drew near, the flowers she chose leaned, little by little, toward the meaning of farewell.

👥 Characters

Lila, only in the greenhouse at night, becomes a bundle of curiosity whose questions and exclamations never stop. Where the daytime Lila is, and what she carries there, you do not yet know. The head gardener, Oswald Melzer, is a taciturn old craftsman who has served the royal gardens for fifty years. He is a man for whom a single word does the job when he opens his mouth, but the way he chooses that word carries the weight of someone who has seen everything. He has noticed the night visitor, and says nothing.

🎭 How to play this story

Exchange words and flowers in the greenhouse at night, leaf through the dictionary of flower meanings to read her true heart, and by day draw closer to her identity through the gardener's work and the murmur of the court. Once you have realized, will you go on pretending to know nothing? With the betrothal and the order to close the greenhouse bearing down, you are the one who chooses the final bloom to set on the workbench. The language of flowers cannot be taken back. It reaches her, meaning and all.