This past week, I received one phone call and two emails from several different friends across the country who were drooling over a "California garden" they saw in a movie. They wanted to let me know how envious they were that we had such incredible, luscious, picture-perfect vegetable gardens out here.
Huh?
Apparently, they just saw the movie, "It's Complicated" and they fell in love the kitchen garden of Meryl Streep's character. It is an incredible vegetable garden that is supposed be in sunny California. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I did see photos of the garden in question.
Now folks, I live in Los Angeles and yes, we can garden all year round. And yes, we can have lovely gardens here.
We are lucky…but not lucky enough to have a garden like the one in the movie! That garden is a Hollywood set!
The picture perfect plants? They were greenhouse grown and set in the ground hours before shooting. The lovely tomatoes? Wired on!
It is just like how the picture-perfect, photo-shopped models on the magazine covers make us all feel inadequate and fat — Movie gardens like the one in "It's Complicated" made gardeners around the world wonder why THEIR garden never looks that good. Fear not people….it is an illusion! Don't feel inadequate! Know that the movie garden is beautiful and even inspiring…but a garden that perfect it is only attainable if you have a slew of set designers working in your backyard…or a whole lot of time on your hands.
Don't believe me? Read this account in the LA Times.
Please know that our California gardens do get bugs, disease, brown leaves and even frost (although rarely). Just like you, there are times when our gardens look incredible and times when they look, well…REAL. Bug bites and all.
I hope that makes everyone feel better.
About the Author
Theresa Loe blogs here about taking the garden full circle while striving for a more local, fresh-from-the-garden lifestyle. She is a TV producer, video host, freelance garden writer and a wrangler of chickens and children. (Not necessarily in that order.) For more information on these topics, you can subscribe to her free monthly newsletter.
Theresa Loe is the award- winning Co-Executive Producer & Canning Expert on Growing A Greener World TV. She blogs here about Living Homegrown®, local and fresh-from-the-garden. 
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
I hope Hollywood’s portrayal of gardens doesn’t create the same sort of societal illness that it’s portrayal of women does. Imagine trying to keep up with that garden?
My point exactly Kat! That is all we need. It is hard enough to deal with the slick magazine photos…but that movie garden is to DIE for!
The garden was too perfect. It looked like a CHEMICAL COMPANY ad circa 1962. The garden lacked ROMANCE & MYSTERY.
Scale & flow were lacking. Did it tie into the rest of the landscape? Nope. Looked like it was plopped from a space ship from planet perfect.
I think the movie character would have had a potager instead of a vegetable garden.
Ironically, I posted about this garden this morning.
Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
Wait ’til the bunnies find it. Or the snails, gophers and slugs. We have them all here in California, Hollywood sets included. Unless this garden is indoors? Well, then, wait until those cabbages notice they’re not getting real sunshine, fresh air and good drainage!
We loved the movie and the “staged” garden!
My husband and I are heading out to LA/Santa Monica in few days where we hope to bask in warm temps! It’s not usually too cold here in North Carolina, but this year…
Cheers,
Cameron
Tara,
I can’t comment on the scale and the flow because I only saw photos and have not yet seen the movie. But I did have the thought that in order to look that perfect it would have to be sprayed in real life. I will go check out your post! Thanks for commenting here.
Debra-
Good point my friend! Love to see what it looked like a month later. LOL.
Cameron-
I think most of the gardeners who saw the movie loved the look and idea of the perfect garden. It made people want to garden too which is alway a good thing!
You will have a wonderful time here in So. CA. The weather is picture perfect right now. Everyone is wearing shorts and flip flops. Bring sunscreen! Enjoy!!
~Theresa
The whole thing seems humorous to me.
I once had Ortho come shoot a TV commercial at an all organic garden that we installed and maintained. Talk about truth in advertising – not !.
And then one year while participating in a show garden exhibit I had to wire lemons onto camellia espalier plants because our lemon plants had died in a frost and it was already printed in the program that there would be a espalier lemon hedge.
Oy. I guess I am just a guilty as those TV producers.
Michelle! How funny is that? You had to wire on lemons! Naughty!
This kinda reminds me of an article I wrote for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
link to post-gazette.com
I’m glad I got all this info about the garden before I saw the movie. I am old enough not to be seduced by movies and magazines, but we do so long for fantasy to be real. I think my potager has lots of romance and mystery, but it is not very photographable.
Ha ha! Movie gardens are never real (I hope!).
Can’t wait to see what you make for the CanJam!
Hey T.C. -
You are right. You and I were on the same wavelength here…as usual. Loved your article!
Commonweeder-
I bet your potager is more photographable than you think!!! But as long as it is providing you with what you need, who cares! Right?
Catalina-
Thanks for stopping by!
I have not decided yet which recipe to choose. I still need to post about the CanJam. No one here knows about it yet. I will post about it later this week. What are YOU canning this week?
~T
Well, I feel better now. As a TV producer of a vegetable gardening show, I especially was lusting for that same look for my show. However, I chalked it up to the good fortune of living in so. California. It’s nice to know that even in Hollywood, those gardens are still crafted by set designers. Living in the southeast, we could only dream of a garden like that. But as was pointed out already, even I who knows better wanted that garden. I wonder how many “soon to be gardeners” were inspired by that garden and will soon find out, gardens like that, really don’t exist in the real world. I’m sure the movie producers weren’t thinking about that when they made this garden but for us real gardeners who try to tell it like it is, maybe that picture perfect garden did more harm than good…especially to the newbies that think they’ll get the same results. Thanks Theresa for this insightful and interesting post.
BTW, I know of one new gardener that because of the movie, was inspired to learn more about gardening. She googled “vegetable gardening” and found me. Turned out it was an old college girlfriend I hadn’t heard from since then.
Joe,
That is very cool that someone found you because of the movie garden! Great story to tell!
Perhaps as garden communicators, we just need to spread the word about enjoying the fantasy of the garden without expecting the results in real life.
But I think that if it gets MORE people gardening, it is a good thing. We can teach them the rest.
~Theresa
Totally inspires!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I know it is way too perfect but it gets my gardening engine rev’d up!!!!!!!! Fantasy!!!!!Love it::)))
I’m a little late with my comment, but since I’m deaf and have no theatres in my area that show rear-window or open captions I have to wait until something comes to DVD before watching. Thus, my delay in seeing this movie for the first time.
I was totally inspired by the garden in “It’s Complicated”, and the timing of my viewing was perfect for the northern MN season, as early June is recommended for planting in this zone. Of course, I’m not stupid and know that movie gardens tend to be fake, but I’ve been working on my raised bed garden (we are nothing but sand and rock, so raised beds are necessary) for three years now and this years it’s finally coming together. I do like order and neatness, but also agree that more wild and natural garden tends to be my preferred taste, so what I ultimately will end up with is a combination of both extremes–at least I’m hoping that’s what I’ll end up with.
)
The garden in the movie got me moving with inspiration and I worked five consecutive, 12 to 14 hour days planting and finishing the beds. I wasn’t inspired to make a perfect “movie” garden, but seeing such healthy, robust and beautifully green plants was inspiring in that I wanted to get my seeds and plants in the ground so that I could begin reaping the bounty of the short, northern growing season!!
However, as I watched the movie I wondered why a gourmet cook never seemed to pick anything from her garden, as it looked untouched, simply for show. It a movie!!