a fun gardening movie

Last July I did a post on the doc­u­men­tary A Man Named Pearl, and at point asked a ques­tion about what films there were about gar­den­ing. Leslie made the rec­om­men­da­tion of Green­fin­gers, a Y2K British pro­duc­tion star­ring Clive Owen and Helen Mir­rin. Based loosely on a true story, it told of incar­cer­ated gar­den­ers in Eng­land that had a reha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gram involv­ing gar­den­ing. In real life the pris­on­ers even­tu­ally went on to design award win­ning gar­den exhibits at the Hamp­ton Court and Chelsea Flower Shows.

My Net­flix queue is pretty long, but by last week I’d worked through a few dozen films and the red enve­lope con­tain­ing Green­fin­gers arrived in the mail. I won’t give away the end any more than I have–It’s based only loosely on the facts I’ve men­tioned above. But if you haven’t seen it already it’s def­i­nitely a wor­thy movie rental–Warm, funny and roman­tic, it’s a great film for these long win­ter nights.

Now if only the film didn’t use so many plas­tic plants, includ­ing a red hibis­cus that fea­tures promi­nently in the plot. We’re gar­den­ers, peo­ple! We can tell!

January 12 2009 | Categories: gardening | Tags: • | 7 Comments »