The Well-Placed Weed: The Bountiful Life of Ryan Gainey (2018)

The Well-Placed Weed: The Bountiful Life of Ryan Gainey is a feature documentary about the life of Ryan Gainey. It was shot over the course of six years, from 2010 to 2016. Gainey has been the focus of numerous gardening television programs, but this film is the first project to examine the complexities of his life. As the film shows, he was a contradictory character, both off-putting and tender, self-absorbed and generous, artificial and authentic. Ryan Gainey was a lover of beauty, and his home garden in Decatur, Georgia was his masterpiece. It was, as he often said, a “garden of remembrance” where his old friends and family lived on in the overlapping blooms of heirloom plants.