Future Forests was recently taken over, when a film crew of over fifty people descended on the nursery, they arrived with trucks, trailers and caravans and even bought along a double decker bus as a make shift cafeteria!

The crew were filming scenes for the movie ‘Wild’, a feature length production based on the true story of Mary Reynolds, a garden designer from Wexford who at just 28 years old, stunned the horticultural world with her garden ‘The Celtic Sanctuary’ and won the first Irish gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show in that category. Back in 2002, Mary had submitted a successful proposal to the organisers of Chelsea and now she needed help to make it happen. Mary approached Mike and Christy Collard of Future Forests to see if they would be willing to get involved in the planting and construction of her show garden. Christy was working on a community park in Lalibela, Ethiopia at the time and Mary travelled out to persuade him to help build the garden at Chelsea.

Needless to say, Mike and Christy took up her offer. Stone, hawthorn trees and wildflowers were carefully transported from West Cork to central London, a small army of Future Forests workers set up camp in a little flat in Marble Arch for several weeks and Mary’s vision of an enchanted Irish wildflower garden gradually became a Gold Medal-winning reality.
‘It’s an Indie movie – a kind of romantic comedy based around that story,’ says Mary.

For the movie, the garden was recreated by Christy and several of the team that built the original garden in Chelsea. Christy and other members of Future Forests were also fortunate enough to get small parts in the movie.

The movie was shot on location all over Ireland, including several scenes at Future Forests. The crew also travelled out to Ethiopia and captured what they described as ‘stunning footage’.

‘Wild’ is written and directed by Vivienne De Courcy, an Irish-American, who Mary met when she designed a garden for her. The film stars up and coming actors, Emma Greenwell from Shamless US and Tom Hughes from Cemetery Junction.

‘Wild’ is funded by Green Earth, the Irish Film Board, RTÉ and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland and will be released in summer 2014.

Photo by Dave Kavanagh at IndySkint Films