Lara Palmqvist, Writer 

Sloan Grant(s) Received: 2023, University of Texas, Austin, Student Discovery Prize / 2024, SFFILM Sloan Science in Cinema Filmmaker Fellowship

Project Type: Feature 

Genre: Drama

Length: 125 pages

Field of Science: Agricultural Science, Bioengineering, Climate change, Genetics

Stage: Development 

Synopsis: 

No one knows their way around the land like LENNY: a middle-aged botanist with rapturous affection for the natural world, based in Kentucky bluegrass country. There was a time when Lenny could count on the reliability of the seasons to earn a steady income from his landscaping business while he bred heirloom crops on the side. It was enough to provide for himself and his wife, JO, an artist devoted to memorializing extinct animals through sculpture. Yet as climate change deepens, so does environmental injustice, creating stark divisions between those who can afford luxuries like lawns and those left in wastelands of bare dirt. Food insecurity is also increasingly evident as agricultural crops falter beneath environmental stress.

With few lawns left to tend for his main income, Lenny finds himself short on work when it’s needed most—Jo, pregnant, has been diagnosed with breast cancer, and she’s refusing treatment until the baby is born. To support his dream of buying a farm in northern regions to protect his family, Lenny undertakes a morally complex quest to convince a BigAg company called KentGene, owned by executive KEN KENTWOOD, to license his seeds. Across decades of seed breeding, Lenny has achieved new varieties of soy and corn that exhibit high drought tolerance. KentGene is interested in Lenny’s seeds if he can scale up his test plot to prove his data is sound. Yet leasing arable farmland is expensive, and expanding his plot will require Lenny to plant his entire existing seed stock, risking everything.

When Lenny takes a landscaping job at an estate with a secluded field perfect for planting, he thinks he’s found a solution to all his problems. The proprietress, LILITH, wheelchair-bound after an accident, tasks Lenny with overseeing the installment of an elaborate garden, complete with a hedge maze and dozens of transplanted fruit trees, for an elite bacchanalia with a theme of the Garden of Eden—dress code angels and demons, good and evil, a way to dismiss fears of the end of the world by going back to the very beginning. Her daughter, SASHA, struggles against her mother’s outlook and dreams of going to art school. When Lenny secretly plants his seeds in the field, Sasha is at first resentful. In time, however, Lenny’s close attention to the natural world reminds her of her late father, winning her over, and she becomes an unlikely ally.

As the garden installation proceeds, Lenny works overtime managing the transplanted trees and hedges, keeping in contact with Ken and his plant geneticists, and caring for his growing crops. He and Sasha bond as they labor over the hidden field. He’s not the only one keeping a secret—Jo, aware of their financial strain, accepts a substitute teaching job at the school where her sister works. One day during an emergency drill she suffers a miscarriage. The dreams Lenny thought he was building toward evaporate in the wake of the devastating loss. Though he tries to quit his landscaping job to help Jo, Lilith refuses, saying she needs him for the grand garden party.

The party is a lavish affair, with guests dressed in finery, luxurious foods, and entertainment that aligns with the Garden of Eden theme. Yet there’s trouble in paradise: to Lenny’s horror, Ken Kentwood arrives as Lilith’s guest of honor, revealing that the two of them know about Lenny’s secret plantings. Under pressure, Lenny is forced into a hasty sale of the seeds at a steep loss. Ken reveals his plans to genetically alter Lenny’s crops with disruptor genes—a real technology that will sterilize the plants and prevent them from producing viable seed for saving and replanting, forcing customers to rebuy seed from KentGene every year. It’s one loss too many: using fireworks from the party, Lenny burns the field to prevent Ken from implementing his plan. When the fire jumps the river, Lenny realizes even this final revenge was beyond his control. The entire garden burns. Lilith, trapped among the chaos and unable to run, doesn’t survive the wreckage.

A jump forward in time finds Lenny, Sasha, and Jo back at the bungalow where we started. This time, however, other landscapers who helped install Lilith’s garden arrive to collect seed from Lenny for replanting. Using the remaining crops in his home field, Lenny has designed his own system of distribution, now through community. In his final evolution, Lenny moves from seeking his own individual paradise to finding hope and purpose in the mutual care of others.