Portrait of a Garden

2015 • 98 minutes

About this movie

As the seasons slip by at a centuries-old Dutch estate, an 85-year-old pruning master and the owner work on cultivating crops in the kitchen garden. To do this successfully requires a degree of obsessiveness, the old man explains in this calm, observational documentary.The pruning master still works every day. It would be easier if he were only 60 and young. For fifteen years, the two men have been working on a pear arbour, which this year may finally meet overhead. But how to prune it? And all the other trees, crops and spices that grow here? Once, you could even be a professor in this, but the university abolished the position and now the knowledge is in danger of being lost.
Fortunately, the young owner wants to prevent this. While pruning and discussing the weather and the state of the world, he watches the centuries-old art of the pruning master and memorises the terms.