Plants take center stage as famed production designer comes to Sherman Gardens
Whether peeking out of a mantelpiece vase or sumptuously surrounding broad architectural planes, the plants that appear on a television or film set are often as meticulously selected as the actors at the center of a scene.
Perhaps no one knows this better than Nelson Coates, an Emmy Award-winning production designer whose painstaking attention to detail has graced and enhanced the sets of numerous film and television hits, including “The Morning Show” on Apple TV+ and the visually resplendent “Crazy Rich Asians.”
For more than three decades Coates — an architect and interior design expert who splits his time between Laguna Beach and Studio City — has been building sets in studios and on location, ensuring every plant and flower not only accurately represents the time and location being portrayed in a scene but also drives the narrative of a character or story arc.
“There are ways you can see the story through the plants and through the natural environments and not-so-natural environments you make with natural things,” he said in an interview Thursday.
“If a character is eccentric, maybe you have 30 pots of ivy. Or maybe it’s a super-tailored wall of sansevieria, and it’s really tight and orderly. [With] anything you put in front of the camera — if you’re a good storyteller there should be no unnecessary elements.”
Coates will explore the impact of plants and gardens in film narratives in a lecture Tuesday evening at Sherman Library & Gardens, as part of a monthly series that features speakers and topics intertwining history, horticulture and the arts.
Scott LaFleur, executive director of the Corona del Mar botanical garden, said he became affiliated with the designer and his work through Coates’ partner Ruben Flores, owner of Laguna Nursery, whom he met shortly after arriving at the Gardens in 2014.
But it wasn’t until several years later, when he heard Coates speak during a meeting of the Men’s Garden Club of Los Angeles on the topic of plants in productions, that he knew he’d be a perfect fit for the series.
“He was one of the most well-received speakers we’ve ever had. I absolutely knew he’d be a knockout and so worked with him to get him on the calendar,” LaFleur recalled Thursday. “He was really engaging, and the subject matter, for the gardens, was right on spot. And who doesn’t love Hollywood and the movies and this wonderful thing we have here?”
In addition to elaborating on the narrative elements embodied by different species of flora, Coates may also discuss the importance of understanding how plant propagation, selection and arrangement changes from one era to the next and from place to place.
“One of the things that’s really interesting is to see how, just like fashion, plants come in and out of style in an environment,” he said, time-hopping from Victorian “parlor palms,” to fiddle-leaf figs. “Floral design has also changed over time, so you want to make sure your choice of a combination of flowers fits a certain period.
“You have to immerse yourself in an entire era, immerse yourself in the culture and in the characters,” he continued. “I’m a visual anthropologist, basically.”
“Creating Worlds – The Impact of Plants and Gardens in Film Narratives” takes place Tuesday, from 7 to 8 p.m. at Sherman Library & Gardens, 2647 East Coast Hwy, in Corona Del Mar. Tickets cost $5 for members, $10 for nonmembers. For more information, visit thesherman.org.
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