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LMGI COMPASS
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Summer 2020
back in UK architecture. Ideally, we wanted a colonial house in a
subtropical garden and importantly, this sequence needed a swim-
ming pool!
We started scouting options discovering a country house with a
Mughal dome; a Shimla cottage in Tunbridge Wells and a promis-
ing-looking Cottage Orme in Gloucestershire but none had the sub-
tropical garden where we meet Mary for the first time. These were
important scenes and Marc wanted to get them right. I returned to
our location database and scanned through; one strong candidate
stood out. Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens on the Dorset Coast. I
had seen in some images a 'colonial style' building but what was it
and could we make it look like a house in India?
Thankfully, Abbotsbury's subtropical plants had survived the
snowfall but would it survive a major film crew? The colonial-look-
ing building turned out to be their busy restaurant. It was our only
option and if I failed to secure the location, it would be an expensive
set build. Walls can be repainted, furniture repaired and compensa-
tion paid, but can you rescue a rare or prize specimen plant from
being squashed under a 50kg lamp? I met the head gardener, Steve
Griffith, an exotic plant hunter who had been on expeditions to the
Far East to bring back some of the rare garden and told him and
the general manager exactly what we wanted to do. I took Grant's
sketch drawings of what the restaurant would look like with adobe
wall cladding, the outside dining area covered in red sand with its
Indian fountain and explained why we needed to widen a gateway
for a huge spider crane to come in to replicate the sun. This would
all take about two weeks' work (for a day and a half filming) and may
cause some (really … a lot of) inconvenience to the visitors and we
really needed to film this in high summer!
I waited. I really thought they would say no to the idea. It seems
everyone loves The Secret Garden, including the exotic plant hunter
Steve. Abbotsbury was completely on board, even offering to move
or cut back plants if required. To enable our filming, we needed to
close the restaurant down for five days. This did not faze them ei-
Fountains Abbey. Photo ©2020 Studiocanal S.A.S.
