{"id":2259,"date":"2007-06-01T23:12:49","date_gmt":"2007-06-02T04:12:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.168.1.5\/gardens\/gardenlog\/?p=2259"},"modified":"2017-07-19T14:45:43","modified_gmt":"2017-07-19T19:45:43","slug":"greenfingers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/garden-essays\/greenfingers\/","title":{"rendered":"Greenfingers"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t usually write movie reviews on this site but then again I don’t usually come across a movie that involves gardening as a major plot device. (The only other one that comes to mind is The Secret Garden<\/i>.)<\/p>\n

I rented Greenfingers primarily because Clive Owen<\/a> is in it. But I stuck around for the gardening.<\/p>\n

Gardening is a national passion in Britain. From the fancy designers at the RHS Chelsea Show, to rural villages competing in Britain in Bloom Campaign<\/a>, to urban guerilla gardeners, everywhere you look, you’ll find gardeners. Even in prisons. Clive Owen plays a murderer who is sent to a progressive prison where he discovers he has greenfingers (the British equivalent of our greenthumbs).<\/p>\n

If you believe in the restorative power of gardening, then you’ll probably like Greenfingers<\/i>. It hovers in the territory of heartwarming without quite being treacly, thanks to a great cast. Helen Mirren is especially fun as Georgina Woodhouse, a Rosemary Verey\/Penelope Hobhouse\/Martha Stewart-type gardening doyenne.<\/p>\n

I was hooked from the opening sequence because I recognized the village that Clive Owen was riding his bike through as Lower Slaughter, which we visited last year<\/a>. England in the movies always looks so impossibly charming that it can’t be real. So I was very excited to recognize this very street.<\/p>\n

\"Lower
Although we spent only a couple of hours walking around the Slaughters, they made quite an impression.<\/i><\/p>\n

This is a very sweet movie; however, gardeners with children might care to note that it is rated R for language and sexuality (romp in the woods with visible male butt, unfortunately not Clive Owen’s).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Clive
Clive Owen evades police in a chase scene through Lower Slaughter.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2259"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5468,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2259\/revisions\/5468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}