Ten-year-old Panka and six-year-old Mischka spend an idyllic childhood in a well-guarded villa and its overgrown garden in Rosehill. It is the summer of 1956. The children's idiosyncratic world mirrors the grotesque combination of the superstitious and God-fearing sensitivity of the domestic staff and the parents' efforts to build a 'new world order" while, notwithstanding their communist ideals, living in the lap of luxury. The adults are busy; the children grow up without restraints, like weeds. The overgrown garden is their world.