Gardens in the Movies: It’s Complicated
A couple of nights ago my husband and I had a chance to get out of the house together for one of the first times since having our baby boy, Nate. Nate’s Gramma came over to babysit while we went to a movie.
Have you seen “It’s Complicated” yet? If you haven’t, and you’re a gardener, this is a movie you won’t want to miss.
On the way home from the movie I was telling Graham about how during the scenes that take place in the gardens, I was barely paying attention to the film’s dialogue, everything was so lush and green and growing in those scenes.
“You should write about it for your gardening website,” he told me.
When I came home and Googled the film title in conjunction with the word garden I found that I’m late to this party. Other garden bloggers have already written all kinds of things about this make believe movie garden which was supposed to be situated in Santa Barbara.
A Los Angeles Times’ L.A. at Home blogger, Deborah Netburn, did an interview piece on the utopian garden in “It’s Complicated” with Jon Hutman, the movie’s production designer. She writes,
While there are no CGI cabbages or rhubarb special effects in the film, this is still not a garden that is humanly possible, even for Martha Stewart. The vegetables were grown in a greenhouse for two months before the garden scene was shot, and any plant that looked a little scrubby was not used.
So that’s the key to having a beautiful kitchen garden! All you need is a greenhouse and a set designer to keep everything looking good.
Do you think Alec Baldwin is the type of man who pulls weeds?
And as Andrea Bellamy of Heavy Petal put it so correctly in her post, “Sneak peak at It’s Complicated kitchen garden,”
It’s all very idyllic in a potager-meets-Spanish-Colonial kind of way, and I want it desperately.
So yes, even though the garden isn’t actually possible for the average vegetable gardener to attain, it was still really fun and beautiful to look at, especially this time of year in Ontario when the ground is partially covered with snow and everything is freezing and gray. Inspiration often appears in the unlikeliest of places, doesn’t it?
(Photo credit: Melinda Sue Gordon / Universal Studios)
I'd have been watching carefully myself!
I wonder if it will come here? We'll see! Thanks for the info.
Just like reading garden magazines. They are all so perfect and idyllic. But still fun to imagine having. How's the babe doing? That's one sprout I'd like to see more of.
It's a good movie, gardens or not. But if you *do* get to it, look out for the lavendar growing around Meryl Streep's character's house. OMG GORGEOUS.
Yes, exactly, Sigrun!
Oh he's growing so fast. He's doing great. I really have to make a point of getting his photo up here this week! Thanks for asking.
"..even though the garden isn’t actually possible for the average vegetable gardener to attain, it was still really fun and beautiful to look at.."
Finally, a normal opinion about the garden in this movie! I agree with you completely. Personally, I don't why some people made so much fuss about the fact that the garden is "made up": most things in movies aren't real, we do realize that, don't we?
christian barnard is doing some really interesting work surrounding this concept….here is one from back in august of 2009 http://christianbarnardblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/... also check out the awesome one he done on blur, somewhere on his blog.
I would just annotate it as the next scene and then annotate back to the origin location.