Garden’s Don’t Lie…is an ongoing documentary video series by community film-maker Mona Khizam. The project explores how our gardens can reveal the truth about ones values and the lives we lead through the relationship individual owners have with their plots of land. As part of OSCA’s ongoing Projects of the Everyday platform, that seeds, develops and presents SA artist-led projects in innovative spaces of creativity, making and experimentation.

This version was made in the South Australian suburbs of Elizabeth Grove, Parkside & Salisbury with the gardeners – Norris Ginger (pictured), Andrew Manglara and Joe Kielnerowski of Joe’s Connected Garden. It looked beyond the public face of these suburban gardens and explored the factors that make each of these 3 gardens what they are today: a garden where community is routinely grown alongside vegetables, a garden that brought to the fore a man long considered lost, and a memorial garden, forever caught in a moment of time. It originally was screened as a work-in-progress at the inaugural SAGA: Adelaide International Woman’s Film Festival and Fontanelle Gallery, Port Adelaide and premiered in 2019 as part of SALA.

A new version made in the southern suburbs of Hackham and Morphett Vale is soon to premiere online supported by the City of Onkaparinga.