Movies With Plant and Gardening Themes: Films

Filmmakers Scott Galloway and Brent Pierson collaborate on this documentary about a factory worker and self-taught topiary artist from South Carolina who transformed his once-average yard into a wondrous garden that now draws tourists from across the country.

What do an elderly topiary gardener, a retired lion tamer, a man fascinated by mole rats, and a cutting-edge robotics designer have in common? Both nothing and everything in this unconventional documentary directed by Erroll Morris.

An old mother and her middle-aged daughter, the aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, live their eccentric lives in a filthy, decaying mansion in East Hampton.

A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching.

Portrait of Andy Goldsworthy, an artist whose specialty is ephemeral sculptures made from elements of nature.

Part artist, part adventurer, part scientist, Englishman Mark Catesby (1683-1749) was a pioneering figure in the scientific exploration of the New World. Begun more than 50 years before the American Revolution, his Natural history of Carolina, Florida & the Bahama Islands was the first fully illustrated study of North American flora and fauna.

Image and music are intertwined in this third collaboration between director Godfrey Reggio and composer Philip Glass. The film was produced to celebrate the World Wildlife Fund's Biological Diversity Campaign.

A collection of expertly photographed scenes of human life and religion.

A movie with no conventional plot: merely a collection of expertly photographed scenes. Subject matter has a highly environmental theme.

An exploration of technologically developing nations and the effect the transition to Western-style modernization has had on them.

Documentary on the migratory patterns of birds, shot over the course of three years on all seven continents.

A young boy stumbles into a mysterious girl who floats down from the sky. The girl, Sheeta, was chased by pirates, army and government secret agents. In saving her life, they begin a high flying adventure that goes through all sorts of flying machines, eventually searching for Sheeta's identity in a floating castle of a lost civilization.

While protecting his village from rampaging boar-god/demon, a confident young warrior, Ashitaka, is stricken by a deadly curse. To save his life, he must journey to the forests of the west. Once there, he's embroiled in a fierce campaign that humans were waging on the forest. The ambitious Lady Eboshi and her loyal clan use their guns against the gods of the forest and a brave young woman, Princess Mononoke, who was raised by a wolf-god. Ashitaka sees the good in both sides and tries to stem the flood of blood. This is met be animosity by both sides as they each see him as supporting the enemy.

Doctor Gulliver is poor, so nothing - not even his charming fiancé Elisabeth - keeps him in the town he lives. He signs on to a ship to India, but in a storm he's washed off the ship and ends up on an island, which is inhabited by very tiny people. After he managed to convince them he's harmless and is accepted as one of their citizens, their king wants to use him in war against a people of giants. Compared to them, even Gulliver is a gnome.

Wallace and his loyal dog, Gromit, set out to discover the mystery behind the garden sabotage that plagues their village and threatens the annual giant vegetable growing contest.

Imagine the most selfish, vain, sarcastic and sophisticated man imaginable, meeting and marrying (for her money) an utterly naive, pure, awkward, cloistered academic woman; a botanist. Walter Matthau and Elaine May star.

Frequently cynical screenwriter Charlie Kaufman has just taken on a new assignment. That is, to adapt writer Susan Orlean's "The Orchid Thief" into a screenplay, all of it based on the life of the eccentric John Laroche, an exotic plant collector based out of Florida. While his easygoing twin brother Donald, is writing scripts with ease, Charlie finds himself on a perpetual struggle that never seems to end.

Chance, a simple gardener, has never left the estate until his employer dies. His simple TV-informed utterances are mistaken for profundity. Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine and Melvyn Douglas star in this Oscar-winning film based on Jerzy Kosinski’s satire.

A man wanting to stay in the US enters into a marriage of convenience, but it turns into more than that. Starring Gerard Depardieu and Andie MacDowell.

A prison inmate with a green thumb goes on to compete in a national gardening competition. (Chelsea Flower Show) Based on a true story. Helen Mirren, Clive Owen.

In this original, now a cult film, a clumsy young man cultivates a bloodthirsty plant, forcing him to kill to feed it.

A nerdish florist finds his chance for success and romance with the help of a giant man-eating plant who demands to be fed. Rick Moranis, Steve Martin, Bill Murray.

A small-town English widow, facing financial troubles after her husband's suicide, turns to agriculture of an illegal kind. Brenda Blythyn and Craig Ferguson.

A few decades after the destruction of the Inca empire, a Spanish expedition leaves the mountains of Peru and goes down the Amazon river in search of gold and wealth. Soon, they come across great difficulties and Don Aguirres, a ruthless man who cares only about riches, becomes their leader. But will his quest lead them to "the golden city", or to certain destruction?

In the 1800s a naturalist marries into a family of British aristocrats. Mark Rylance and Kristin Scott Thomas star in this gothic psycho-sexual drama based on A.S. Byatt’s novella.

This is essentially eight separate short films, though with some overlaps in terms of characters and thematic material - chiefly that of man's relationship with his environment. All are based upon the actual dreams of director Akira Kurosawa.

An artificial man with scissors for hands lives completely alone until a local woman befriends him and brings him home.

This slow-paced gem is about the civilizing influence of Italy on beleaguered Londoners both male and female. Miranda Richardson, Joan Plowright and Jim Broadbent star in this film based on a novel by Elizabeth von Arnim.

The story of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an extremely determined man who intends to build an opera house in the middle of a jungle.

In a rural French village an old man and his only remaining relative cast their covetous eyes on an adjoining vacant property. They need its spring water for growing their flowers, so are dismayed to hear the man who has inherited it is moving in. They block up the spring and watch as their new neighbor tries to keep his crops watered from wells far afield through the hot summer. Though they see his desperate efforts are breaking his health and his wife and daughter's hearts they think only of getting the water.

Takes place in a chateau, an ambiguous story of a man and a woman who may or may not have met last year at Marienbad.

A plane crash delivers a group of people to the secluded land of Shangri-La -- but is it the miraculous utopia it appears to be?

An exiled magician finds an opportunity for revenge against his enemies muted when his daughter and the son of his chief enemy fall in love in this uniquely structured retelling of the 'The Tempest'.

The story of one shepherd's long and successful singlehanded effort to re-forest a desolate valley. Based on Jean Giono's story.

A young British girl born and raised in India loses her neglectful parents in an earthquake. She is returned to England to live at her uncle's estate. Her uncle is very distant due to the loss of his wife ten years before. Neglected once again, she begins exploring the estate and discovers a garden that has been locked and neglected. Aided by one of the servants' brothers, she begins restoring the garden, and eventually discovers some other secrets of the manor. Film adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic.

When Cholera takes the parents of Mary Lennox, she is shipped from India to England to live with her Uncle Craven. Archibald Craven's house is dark, drafty, with over 100 rooms built on the edge of the moors. Mary finds that her Uncle does not wish to see her, which is fine with Mary as she herself is rude and spoiled. While walking the gardens the next day, Mary notices that there is a area in the garden surrounded with a high stone wall and no doorway. Dickon, brother of a house maid, tells her of the garden behind the wall. By the path, the raven unearths the hidden key so that Mary and Dickon are able to enter the walled garden to find it overgrown and neglected. Inside the house, she finds that Archibald has a son named Colin, who is crippled and as spoiled as she. Together these three work to make the secret garden their own world.

10-year-old Fiona is sent to live with her grandparents in a small fishing village in Donegal, Ireland. She soon learns the local legend that an ancestor of hers married a Selkie - a seal who can turn into a human. Years earlier, her baby brother washed out to sea in a cradle shaped like a boat; someone in the family believes the boy is being raised by the seals. Then Fiona catches sight of a naked little boy on the abandoned Isle of Roan Inish and takes an active role in uncovering The Secret of Roan Inish. Written by John Oswalt. Modified by Nancy Janelle.

In a small French colony, a drunken man kills someone. While a guillotine is being shipped in, he changes, becoming a good and popular man.

The geologist Lance Hackett is employed by an Australian mining company to map the subsoil of a desert area covered with ant hills prior to a possible uranium extraction. His work is impeded by some aborigines who explain that this is the place where the green ants dream. Disturbing their dreaming will destroy humanity they claim. Hackett informs the company which offers various "solutions" such as a large amount of money or a percentage of a possible revenue. Invited on a trip to a city some of the aborigines sees a military aeroplane and express the wish to own it. The company buys it and gives it to the aborigines as a sign of good will. A runway is made in the desert and the plane is flown to the location. All negotiations concerning the area fail and the dispute goes to a court of the Commonwealth. Parties and experts are heard, obstacles are met such as an aborigine who is the sole survivor of his tribe (and language) and therefore no-one understands what he is saying. Two of the aborigines take off in the plane despite that there is very little fuel left. The mining company wins legally and the aborigines morally. Some aborigines arrives from the mountains and tells about a big winged ant that had fallen from the sky.

A ship sent to investigate a wave of mysterious sinkings encounters the advanced submarine, the Nautilus, commanded by Captain Nemo.

A strange prehistoric beast lurks in the depths of the Amazonian jungle. A group of scientists try to capture the animal and bring it back to civilization for study.

Green fingers is an eerie story about a lady called Mrs Bowen, who really has a magic touch when it comes to gardening. Everything seems to grow very well in her garden, even when it is not supposed to...

A small-town doctor learns that the population of his community is being replaced by emotionless alien duplicates.

In this remake of the 1956 film, a San Francisco health inspector and his colleague discover the human race is being replaced one by one, with clones devoid of emotion.

Prof. Lindenbrook leads his intrepid party on an expedition to the centre of the earth, via a volcano in Iceland, encountering all manner of prehistoric monsters and life-threatening hazards on the way.

Cole Hillman's Arizona ranch is plagued with 'mongrel' rabbits, and he wants to employ an ecologically sound control method. As a favor to college benefactor Hillman, college president Elgin Clark calls in zoologist Roy Bennett to help. Bennett immediately begins injecting rabbits with hormones and genetically mutated blood in an effort to develop a method of disrupting rabbit reproduction. One of the test subjects escapes, resulting in a race of bloodthirsty, wolf-sized, man-, horse-, and cow-eating bunnies. Eventually the National Guard is called in for a final showdown with the terrorizing rabbits.

A spider escapes from an isolated desert laboratory experimenting in giantism and grows to tremendous size as it wreaks havoc on the local inhabitants.

Christine Penmark seems to have it all: a lovely home, a loving husband and the most "perfect" daughter in the world…Patty McCormack stars in this campy 1950’s melodrama about a really bad little girl – and received the Milky Way Gold Star Award as the nation's most outstanding juvenile performer of 1956!

A wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town that slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people there in increasing numbers and with increasing viciousness.

On a beautiful clear night, people around the world are treated to a spectacular meteor shower. In London, Bill Masen misses the show as he is in hospital with his eyes bandaged. The next morning he awakens to find no one answering his bell. He removes the bandages himself and soon realizes that he one of the few people with sight as everyone who observed the meteor shower is now blind. Society has broken down and Bill rescues a young sighted girl. Their challenge is not only to survive in this new world but to survive the onslaught of triffids, flesh eating plants that are now growing rapidly and consuming humans.

An apocalyptic threat to humanity arrives out of the clear blue sky. The cause of the terrifying phenomenon remains unknown, prompting science teacher Elliot Moore to try to elude the invisible killer in Pennsylvania's farmland.

Scientist at an Arctic research station discover a spacecraft buried in the ice. Upon closer examination, they discover the frozen pilot. All hell breaks loose when they take him back to their station and he is accidentally thawed out!

When a high-level government experiment goes terribly awry a group of giant, mutated tomatoes roll through suburbia on a spree of mayhem and murder.

The earliest atomic tests in New Mexico cause common ants to mutate into giant man-eating monsters that threaten civilization.