The Enchanted Greenhouse

Sarah Beth Durst’s The Enchanted Greenhouse (2025) is a fantasy novel within the “cottagecore” and “romantasy” subgenres and the second installment in The Spellshop series. Terlu Perna is a librarian living in an empire where only the elite are allowed to use magic. After illegally casting a spell to give her plant sentience, Terlu is turned into a statue as punishment. Years later, she reawakens on an isolated island with a magical but deteriorating greenhouse. With the help of a gardener named Yarrow and a sentient rose named Lotti, Terlu must unravel a long‑dead sorcerer’s secrets to heal the greenhouse—and herself. The New York Times–bestselling novel explores themes of The Healing Power of Love, Second Chances and the Search for Redemption, and Escaping Isolation Through Empathy.

This guide is based on the 2025 Tor e-book edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide feature depictions of illness, death, and child abuse.

Plot Summary

In the Crescent Islands Empire, only elite sorcerers are permitted to cast spells. However, loneliness drives a librarian named Terlu Perna to use magic to grant her spider plant, Caz, sentience. Unrest in the empire is growing, and the judge who presides over Terlu’s case makes an example of her by ordering that she be turned into a statue and displayed in the Great Library of Alyssium.

Six years later, the spell that turned Terlu into a statue breaks, and she finds herself alive but alone in a snowy forest on the isolated island of Belde. She takes shelter in an enormous enchanted greenhouse, where she meets a gardener named Yarrow. Yarrow brought Terlu back to life because he believed that she was a sorcerer who could help him repair the failing magic that protects the greenhouse. Although he’s disappointed to learn that she’s a librarian, he gives her food and shelter in his cottage.

The next morning, Yarrow offers to help Terlu find transportation off of Belde, but she decides to stay. While exploring the island, she discovers a tower that belonged to Laiken, the sorcerer who created the enchanted greenhouse. Inside the tower, Terlu awakens a sentient rose named Lotti, who has been dormant for years. The sorcerer created many more sentient plants, but they all went dormant before his death. Lotti begs Terlu to awaken her friends, and the librarian promises to try. With the help of Yarrow and Lotti, Terlu decodes Laiken’s notes, discovers that he intentionally cast Lotti and her friends into an enchanted sleep, and finds a counterspell that allows her to wake up the slumbering plants.

Laiken originally created the greenhouse as a gift for his beloved daughter, Ria. Her death triggered the sorrow and paranoia that gradually overtook the sorcerer. Many gardeners used to maintain the greenhouse, but Laiken gradually dismissed them until only Yarrow and his father remained. After Laiken’s death, Yarrow’s ailing father departed the island in search of medical treatment. As a result, Yarrow has been tending the enormous greenhouse by himself for the past two years. Over half of the greenhouse complex has been lost already, and the gardener is unable to determine why the protective magic on the structure is failing or how to slow its decline. After Terlu succeeds in reviving the sentient plants, she promises Yarrow that she will try to restore the greenhouse’s magic.

Later that day, another greenhouse fails, and many plants perish despite the best efforts of Terlu, Yarrow, Lotti, and the other sentient plants. The loss of another greenhouse persuades Yarrow to accept that he needs the aid of more gardeners. Terlu sends a letter to Yarrow’s family in Alyssium even though bringing more people to Belde places her at risk of being reported for working magic.

Two weeks later, Terlu identifies the spell that fortifies the greenhouse’s glass walls. Although her first attempt to cast it fails, Yarrow’s trust in her remains unshaken. Later that night, Terlu and Yarrow share their favorite childhood memories with one another, and they have their first kiss the next morning. Lotti interrupts before Terlu and Yarrow are able to discuss this development or pursue their physical relationship further.

Terlu finds a way to repair the cracks in the greenhouse’s glass walls, and the sentient plants eagerly agree to help despite the risks of using magic. Next, Terlu works on creating a protective bubble to reinforce the repaired walls. Yarrow kisses her again while they’re working on the new spell. Concerned that Yarrow’s desire for her might stem from his need for her help rather than love for her, Terlu tells him that they should focus on saving the greenhouse until they are certain of their feelings for one another.

To Terlu and Yarrow’s shock, Yarrow’s entire family relocates to the island. Alyssium is in chaos due to a revolution against the empire, and his relatives see Terlu’s message as their only chance of escape. Yarrow still harbors resentment toward his relatives for leaving him, especially his father, Birch, and his sister, Rowan. Because Yarrow finds it difficult to be near his relatives, Terlu volunteers to serve as an intermediary.

During Yarrow’s family’s first morning back on the island, Terlu learns that Laiken’s ghost haunts his tower. Later that day, Terlu and Yarrow work on the bubble spell again. The magic goes awry, temporarily trapping the pair. The frightening experience prompts Terlu to realize that she loves Yarrow, and he convinces her not to give up on herself or her goal of saving the greenhouse.

The next day, another greenhouse fails, but Yarrow is able to rescue almost all of the plants inside with the help of his relatives, Terlu, and the sentient plants. Terlu asks Yarrow, Birch, and Lotti to help her communicate with Laiken’s ghost. They discover that the greenhouse’s magic is failing due to an error in a spell the sorcerer was working on when he died. Laiken’s final spell was intended to cut the greenhouse off from the rest of the world and to take effect a few months after his death, allowing time for the final gardeners to leave the island. However, the phrasing of the spell is flawed, so it destroys another greenhouse every few months instead of protecting the complex. To break the spell, Terlu and Yarrow must locate and destroy the ingredients the sorcerer used to cast it, and Yarrow enlists his family’s help in the search.

The strain between Yarrow and his relatives began even before their departure from Belde. When he was nine years old, his uncle and his father left him alone in the caves under the greenhouse for three days. Terlu realizes that Laiken hid the spell’s ingredients in the caves, and Yarrow insists on accompanying her even though this means confronting his childhood trauma. When the couple is in danger of losing their way in the caves, Yarrow declares that he would rather turn back than risk Terlu’s life, because he loves her more than the greenhouse. Together, Terlu and Yarrow find and destroy the magical ingredients, saving the greenhouse. Yarrow’s father and sister are waiting for the couple when they exit the cave, and Birch apologizes for the ways he’s hurt his son. With the crisis passed, Laiken’s ghost finds peace.

Weeks later, a sailor brings a group of refugees from Alyssium to Belde and gives Terlu a book written by Caz. The former librarian takes the book as proof that she did the right thing by giving the spider plant sentience. One of the refugees is the librarian who smuggled Terlu out of the library when she was a statue, and Terlu is able to repay the woman who saved her life by helping her make a home for herself in Laiken’s tower. All of the island’s human and sentient plant inhabitants gather for the Winter Feast, rejoicing in the found family they’ve created. After the celebration, Terlu and Yarrow thank one another for the many ways in which they’ve transformed each other’s lives and share a kiss.