(2001) Out on parole after fifteen years in prison, since the age of 18, for killing his younger brother in a fight over a girl, Colin Briggs (Clive Owen) hurls a trashcan through a flower-shop window, grabs a bunch of yellow roses for Primrose Woodhouse (Natasha Little), signifying the end of a love affair, and attempts to evade the police on his bicycle. Based on a true story, director/writer Joel Hershman's romantic comedy portrays convicts in a much softer light than the reality.

Before receiving parole, Colin was transferred from high-security incarceration to H. M. Prison Edgefield, a progressive correctional facility under Governor Gerald Hodge (Warren Clarke) with an "open system." Inmates are expected to have jobs to learn a trade to better prepare them to re-enter the world outside.

Initially behaving ill-humoredly toward his gregarious roommate, Fergus Wilks (David Kelly), an elderly lifer in for killing two wives under the influence of alcohol, Colin waters Fergus's red rose while the old man's getting chemo for his cancer. Encouraged to "make friends with your misfortunes," Colin against the odds hesitantly accepts Fergus's advice and a packet of seeds as a Christmas gift, planting the double violets near the prison's football pitch.

When the flowers bloom in the spring, the governor changes Colin's assignment from toilet cleaning to gardening, along with a team made up of Fergus, Tony (Danny Dyer), Jimmy (Paterson Joseph), and Raw (Adam Fogerty). Taking inspiration from horticulture books written by Georgina Woodhouse (Helen Mirren), Colin and his crew of gardeners accept Fergus's challenge of entering the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show; the governor's wife Susan (Sally Edwards), hoping to provide the prison with some positive PR, invites Mrs Woodhouse and her daughter Primrose to Edgefield to meet five of her admirers.

Meanwhile, Tony plants his own seeds in Holly, an employee at the prison.

Impressed with the garden the men created with limited resources, Georgina arranges for Colin and the others to design a garden for her clients, Laurence and Nigel of the Ozlebury home, transporting them from the prison in her Rolls Royce. Further, Colin's innovative soil mixture moves her to say: "Well, Mr Briggs, you have quite a future."

However, when the Ozlebury home is robbed, the five prisoners are under immediate suspicion of having provided the thieves with information about the house's layout and valuable contents; their hopes of participating in the royal flower show are crushed.

After Tony runs off, assumed to have been the guilty party, Colin appears before the parole board to which he says that after taking a life he's learned to give life as a gardener; but following his release and offering Primrose a red rose (representative of passion), the publicly open-minded Georgina disappoints her daughter by judging Colin ("a man good in the dirt") "by what he was, not what he is."

Back in Edgefield, Colin once again proves Fergus to be right: "adversity is your ally."

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