"Botanists, horticulturists, and groundskeepers won't be disappointed by Rosie Stapel's Portrait of a Garden, a comprehensive visual inventory of a fabulously maintained multi-acre 'kitchen garden' on a historic Dutch estate. Others, meanwhile, may walk away feeling as indifferent to the craft of landscaping as they were when they came in—a crippling Achilles' heel in a film whose chief concern is the transmission of out-of-fashion knowledge to new generations. Peppered with a near-constant barrage of footnotes on the lower third of the frame identifying whatever varietal of crop viewers happen to be observing at a given moment, the film is insistent in its efforts to stoke interest in gardening and pruning, yet it stops short of bridging the gap for those less inherently spellbound by soil, roots, and branches."
Full review at Slant.
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