Gardening with Soul

In nature things that are dying off are really getting ready for the next phase of life. And that’s how I see it: I think that’s how spirituality helps you to see things.

– Sister Loyola Galvin

The garden is saying to me all the time: ‘life is evolving’, and if you are going to spend the last few years of your life worrying about how its evolving, then you're wasting your time. Just enjoy it. Makes sense?

– Sister Loyola Galvin

I see it [the garden] as a mystery: life waiting to burst forth!

– Sister Loyola Galvin

Should you find yourself wanting your faith in humanity buoyed up a little, may I direct you to Gardening with Soul, a lovely, gentle study of a year in the life of Sister Loyola, the 90-year-old chief gardener of Wellington's Home of Compassion. You will not encounter a more energetic person on film this year: a generational icon of pragmatic, cheerful, can-do Kiwi virtues.

– David Larsen, previews the NZ Film Festival programme in The Listener

From the time it was a short film, it was structured around seasons. That was a really solid structure on which to hang the film. There was quite a lot of planning that went on before we started shooting, because I had the seasonal structure. I knew how the life story was going to fit into that, and that provided a great framework to then just let it flow and let the more observational spontaneous moments to happen. row but having a plan.

– Director Jess Feast in a Lumière Reader interview, 14 September 2013