A renegade botanist hunted by eco-terrorists takes a brilliant high school junior to be his protégé. The boy's police officer father has been killed in the line of duty, and his mother is dying of cancer. The property that the botanist has taken over had been in the boy's family for three generations before recently being split up for development.

On the hunt for new herbal medicines, the botanist moves in across the street from the boy and uses the large open property to cultivate the plants he needs for his research. The boy and his friends work as his assistants and learn to be scientists. The team of teenagers is carefully mentored and pushed to grow beyond what they would have expected of themselves.

However, when the botanist's indiscretions catch up with him, everything changes, and the boy must decide if he is to take charge and face the danger or walk away and leave the research data for others to finish.