I genuinely think the writers made Nate way dumber than he needed to be with the whole white fritillary situation because those flowers could have literally been his GOLD MINE 😭. The entire problem was that the flowers were protected and were potentially going to stop or seriously complicate the development, but instead of thinking about how he could turn that into an advantage, Nate basically treats them like an obstacle that needs to disappear. If I were him, I would have completely changed the blueprint for the nursing home and made the flowers the centerpiece of the entire property. Imagine a luxury nursing home or hospice called something like “White Fritillary Gardens,” where the building is designed in a circle or crescent around a huge protected greenhouse containing the flowers. The residents could have rooms overlooking the garden, there could be walking paths and peaceful seating areas around it, and the greenhouse could be this beautiful central feature that families and residents get to enjoy. Instead of having an endangered species be the reason your development is controversial, you make protecting that species the entire selling point. You could market it as a luxury senior-living community built around a protected botanical sanctuary, where people get to spend their final years surrounded by nature and something genuinely rare and beautiful. And because it’s a luxury facility, the conservation aspect could actually make it feel MORE exclusive rather than less. The name, architecture, landscaping, marketing, everything could revolve around the flowers. He could have turned “we can’t build here because of these endangered flowers” into “we built this entire place specifically to preserve these endangered flowers.” That’s what drives me crazy about the storyline because Nate is supposed to be this incredibly calculating, intelligent person, yet he never seems to consider the most obvious business strategy: if you can’t remove the thing standing in your way, BUILD AROUND IT AND MAKE IT PART OF THE PRODUCT. 😭 He could’ve potentially had one of the most unique luxury nursing-home developments imaginable, and instead he basically let the flowers become his enemy when they could’ve been the biggest selling point of the entire project. 

nate and those flowers