Glasgow, 1960. A time of bright new beginnings … The Gorbals tenements are being demolished and gleaming new estates are carving their way through the green fields that surround the city. Tom, raised in a Glasgow tenement, is a sheltered, self-contained lad who drifts through life while his widowed mother worries about his inability to find the right girl. Then Mary from the new Easterton estate takes him in hand. Surrounded by all the sparkling new appliances of hire-purchase matrimony, the recession begins to bite. Long hours, loneliness and cruelty lead Tom to drift off in another direction, down the garden to the safe haven of his greenhouse. A man needs a hobby, and surely gardening never hurt a soul …
