Production designer Ashley Fenton was excited to dig into a screenplay with a narrative so steeped in the intricacies of its set design, given that landscaping provides both a basis for the main allegory of the film as well as its vibrant primary setting.
“The idea of the gardener and the regenerative power of plants, it all works hand in hand [with the set design],” Fenton says. “The metaphor is strong there, and it was a pleasure to try and bring that out. It doesn’t always get to happen. Sometimes if people aren’t noticing [the set] that’s almost the best way to be, but in this one we wanted people to notice, and that’s a unique position.”
The production shot for one week in New Orleans, as well as (and mainly) on Saint Francisville’s Rosedown Plantation, in the area’s West Feliciana Parish. As many as 450 people were enslaved on the plantation during the peak years of cotton production, according to Rosedown’s website. Though the filming location’s violent history is not central to the narrative that unfolds there onscreen, it is certainly gestured to with references to Norma having had the land in her family for many generations and being part of the region’s “old money” elite.
Fenton says the film’s greenery department came armed with pallets of flowers and trees to fill out the grounds—a particularly challenging feat even in lush Louisiana due to the filming times during January, February, and March. Some of the florals were added in post-production to supplement. “We were using the actual location as a resource for what made sense for this space, and we wanted it to feel as though the flowers as real [to the space] as possible, even though the story itself is more like an allegory, the most symbolic story of the trilogy,” says Fenton. In preparation, Schrader took a thorough approach to bringing the production designer into his world; he supplied Fenton with a number of gardening books, as well as a few audiobooks he wanted her to simply listen to, just to get a sense of what a gardener’s voice sounded like.