Movies have always inspired us to strive for the better and achieve great things. Even if it was some boring and mundane activity we could always find some comparison or an example that could get us through without too much bother. Luckily, landscaping is everything but boring and mundane, so finding inspiration in the long lasting cinematic history can only amount to something astonishing. So, if you want to rearrange your garden a bit, and you are all out of ideas, here are five ideas you can borrow from these famous movies.
The Great Gatsby
It really doesn’t matter whether you are going to use Jack Clayton’s 1974 adaptation or you are going to resort to more recent Baz Luhrman’s take on the F. Scott Fitzgerald’s magnum opus The Great Gatsby. Either way, you will need to emulate the look of the “Roaring Twenties”. You will do so by adding one or two white pergolas (depending of the size of your backyard), a lot of vintage looking outdoor furniture, and a few details, like gramophone, that will help you to sell the look. Add some bushes, and hedges surrounding the small fountain and your garden will be ready for one of the wild parties we have seen in the movies.
Pan’s Labyrinth
Guillermo del Toro’s dark fairy tale is truly a visual masterpiece. It also features one extraordinary labyrinth so if you have a thing for creepy and melancholic, there is no any doubt what your next move should be. Obviously, you will need one big labyrinth, but you can push the movie’s look further with some gloomy centerpiece like dead tree or worn out fountain covered in vines. Paint the shed and other garden items in appropriately bleak colors, add some fantasy inspired details, and you will have your very own El laberinto del fauno.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Or you can use “House of the Flying Daggers” as your inspiration, it really does not matter. Both of these movies feature iconic fight sequences in bamboo forests, so you will obviously need to dedicate one part of your garden to this plant. The rest should be populated with beautiful Easter Asian elements, such as Asian flowers, appropriate furniture, small fountains, a couple of cherry trees, and, of course, Asian-inspired pergola. If you add few eastern statues or even weapon replicas, you will nail the whole look.
Edward Scissorhands
Although we already have something that can be considered a “Burtonesque” addition on this list, Edward Scissorhands does feature a vibrant and colorful suburbia, so we will include the movie based on those merits. Start your landscaping efforts by making your own hedge sculptures. It will not be easy, but your efforts will be more than rewarded. You can push the movies look even further with the odd combination of bold colors (pink, blue, yellow, green), 1970’s furniture, and a lot of colorful perennials.
Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit trilogy
We are of course talking about the pastoral heaven J.R.R. Tolkien’s Shire most certainly is. Now, huge part of your garden’s identity will depend of creating some kind of “Shireish” shed or patio, but if you manage to do that, you will already have the majority of the job done. The rest will include making some simplistic wooden furniture and rocking chair, planting a lot of vibrant flowers, and covering every manageable surface (shed included) with thick grass.
Here you go, five ideas stolen from five iconic movies. Even if you have not found your cup of tea amongst these choices, we hope that we at least inspired you to revisit your movie collection and find something that will suit your taste better.