Garden Movies

It’s still winter outside, and I’m still more or less trapped inside as many of you are. On nice, or even sem nice days, I am taking walks on the search for winter color that does exist in the Pacific Northwest. On other days, when i am deeply longing for the warmth and sun of summer, I watch gardening movies. Or movies that features gardens, really anything with some botanical eye candy is great.

There is a trailer out now for a film directed by Alan Rickman called “A Little Chaos” about the building of Versailles and the trailer is lovely. I know there is a romance and fancy costumes, but I spent my time looking at the gardens where the movie is set. Oh the horticultural eye candy. Here is the trailer for anyone that wants to take a look

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENSjt4naxlE

    I digress a little bit. For mid winter pick me ups, here a few of my favorite movies for plants.

1. Secret Garden- the 1993 version is my favorite. Watching little kids discover planting and gardening is just a fun watch
2. Greenfingers- It has Clive Owen and competitive show gardens. It’s a win
3. Botany of Desire- A lovely and insightful documentary about different desired characteristics in plants.
4. Coraline- Her fantasy garden is beautiful and is the sort of dream of beauty that all gardeners have
5. Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit- i adore Wallace and Gromit and them being rabbit catchers amongst the little town gardens is adorable
6. Rosemary and Thyme- this is a TV series and is a plant pathologist and friends that run around solving murders and working in some fabulous gardens.

   

    There are more I’m sure but these are the ones I love and will re-watch these at a drop of a dime. I will of course watch “A Little Chaos” when it comes out and it may become a mid-winter staple next year. We shall see

The gardener

 

            My mother was a gardener. She was also an artist, and her passion for creating was evident in her yard.  My dad says that if she hadn’t majored in art in college, she would have picked botany. I even own her old botany book with teeth marks from her old Irish setter, Darwin. She gave it to me when I decided I wanted to go into Horticulture. She may not have known all the botanical names for the things that she grew, but, she had a willingness for plant experimentation that was admirable. 

She had a particular passion for daffodils and when she moved to southwestern Colorado, she started collecting them by the dozen. Every time she saw a new variety she liked, she’d buy at least a dozen and plant them along a sidewalk in her backyard. After a few years, the result was stunning, a mass of yellows, whites, oranges, apricots, and pinks every spring. She just loved how cheerful they were and they were often the first thing that would come up in the spring.

Late in the daffodil season in her yard

There were times when her lack of knowledge played against her. When I was a kid she was determined to have a big, fruit filled apple tree. What she didn’t know is that you  have to prune young apple tree a certain way in order to get them to produce a lot of fruit. The apple trees we had in the backyard were little and cute, but only would have one or apples on them every year. As a final insult, squirrels stole those apples so we never got a single ripe apple off either tree.

I may not have loved everything she did in her garden. She had a tendency to cut fruit tree limbs in order to harvest the fruit for example. At her garden in Southwestern Colorado, she’d spend nice mornings outside, drinking tea and plotting out what she would do next. Her garden was never done, there was always another plant to acquire, another plant she wanted to remove because she didn’t like it anymore.  She knew above all, that in gardening, the garden is never done.  A finished garden is only finished until a plant dies out, or gets overgrown or until you see some new irresistible plant.

Her raised veggie beds made high enough she could sit on a chair and weed