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Sarah Galloway

Documentary Filmmaker

By Jaime Breeden

Sarah Galloway is a documentary filmmaker specializing in translating complex topics into clear and compelling stories. Her first independent film, Bike Riddim, won the Asbury Park Press Award at the 2018 Asbury Park Music + Film Festival. Her second independent film, WILD in the Garden State, is screening in festivals now.

Tell us about your background, where you grew up, what your family was like, your education, etc. I did most of my growing up in Tappan, New York: a few hundred feet from the New Jersey border and 15 miles north of New York City. The north side of the house had a long stretch of lawn where my siblings, friends, and I held epic battles of “Red Light Green Light.” On the southern side of the house, my mother, Janet, designed and planted a garden. She grew up during WWII in England where everyone who could had a Victory Garden. My mom gave my sisters, brother, and me our own small plots to plant what we wished. I remember my brother and I going round to the neighbors to show off our first crop of carrots. My older sister planted flowers. I thought: How lame; you can’t eat flowers! I followed in my father’s footsteps and went into media work. After an undergraduate degree in anthropology at Binghamton University, I went to film school in Chicago at Columbia College. After my first year, I won a full tuition scholarship to complete my MFA.

Do you garden at home? If so, what do you like to grow? When we moved from New York City to the Garden State, New Jersey, our house had a typical suburban lawn. We knew we wanted to transform it into a park-like garden, but we had little gardening experience.

To get started, we ordered a preplanned pollinator garden designed by the Xerces Society. At first, we struggled to remember the names of the

• Meadow Blazing Star (Liatris ligulistylis) • Sweet Joe Pye Weed (Eupatorium purpureum) • Ohio Spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis) • Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) • Prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis) • New England Aster (Aster novae-angliae) • Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) • Wild Senna (Senna hebecarpa) Now, when we go hiking, I love it that we can recognize plants growing in the wild because we’re familiar with them from our own backyard. Since our first garden bed, we’ve added a lot of beds with plants that are more local to the Jersey shore, including Seaside Goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens), Northern Bayberry (Morella pensylvanica), Beach Plum (Prunus maritima), and Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum).

How did you get into film work? While I was working on my MFA, I landed an internship at Kartemquin Films, a documentary shop in Chicago. I was hired because of my editing skills and because I knew how to play basketball! I didn’t know that Hoop Dreams would become a classic film. After film school, I had a strong desire to make lots and lots of short films —just to get better. I returned to New York and freelanced for a while before I landed a dream job in the Exhibition Department at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). There my wish to make lots of short films certainly came true. I worked on videos and interactive media, and later managed a team of freelancers. The exhibition team opened two special exhibits and updated permanent halls every year. I honed my craft working at the museum for 20 years. I left AMNH after my husband Dave retired as an architect. I’ve been freelancing since then, focusing on post-production. I especially love the challenge of crafting storylines that comes with editing documentaries.

Tell us about your new documentary. It is the story of connecting to the natural world in suburban New Jersey. As city transplants, my husband Dave and I had little gardening experience (I don’t count growing the carrots as a

kid!). After years of producing museum videos about biodiversity loss and habitat destruction, I knew I wanted to garden for wildlife. As an architect, Dave wanted to create a beautiful, park-like garden. Shot over 10 years, WILD in the Garden State documents gardening mis-steps, lessons, and experiences that go far beyond replacing a rectangle of lawn. It’s a story of connecting to the natural world in suburban New Jersey.

Why undertake a project like this? It began as video notetaking while I learned to garden. Native plant gardening was such a wonderful experience that I wanted to share it and reach an audience who—through no fault of their own—doesn’t realize the central role that native plant gardens can play in supporting the natural world.

What is your average workday like? My schedule is never average! After decades of working on tight deadlines, it was a relief to make my own schedule and return to freelancing. If I’m working on a freelance project, my day usually look like this: I get up, get breakfast, check email and my calendar. Work for a few hours in my home office. Take a break with Dave to bike to the beach in Asbury Park and run a few miles on the boardwalk. Come home, stretch, shower, get lunch. Then work again until it’s time to prepare dinner. I try not to work again after dinner.

What has been the most rewarding and the most challenging thing about your work? Most rewarding is collaborating with other creative people. The older I get, the more I value the push and pull from collaboration. The most challenging thing is how fast media formats change. Video on old formats like Hi8, BetaCam, and High Def are gone unless vintage video decks are kept in repair. Even “born digital” formats get old and are no longer supported.

What do you like to do outside of your job? Play music. My husband, Dave and I met through playing music. We also like to camp and have gone as far as Glacier National Park in our camper.

Is there anyone you look up to as inspiration, a hero, or a mentor? In documentary filmmaking, I owe a lot to Michael Rabiger, my advisor at film school. I read his book in New York and decided to apply to Columbia College in Chicago, where he headed up the Documentary Center. I still turn to Michael’s book, Directing the Documentary, to help me figure out how to structure a film—to answer the question: why anyone would want to watch your film. In the gardening world, I love Sara Stein’s classic book, Noah’s Garden: Restoring the Ecology of Our Own Back Yards (1993). It was the first book I turned to when Dave and I began to garden. Her advice is to partner with nature: “We plant seeds and think we know something about growing plants, yet the number of seeds we plant are a spoonful compared to the oceans of seeds planted by other animals...”(pg. 15). Noah’s Garden features Sara Stein’s own illustrations.

What advice have you gotten that’s stuck with you then most? Make sure you have fun. My dad, Gil Galloway, said that about working. I follow in his footsteps in that I work in media and try to make the world a better place. That can get all-consuming so “make sure you have fun” is a reminder that nothing is so important that it takes all the joy out of life. It’s hard to be useful or creative when you’re burned out!

What tips or tricks do you have for our readers to get the most out of their own growing spaces at home? Pay attention to what your plants are telling you. See a plant struggling? Maybe it’s not getting enough sun, shade, water, the right soil. When Dave and I began to garden, we imposed our garden design. Now, as the garden continues to develop, we’ve pivoted away from imposing a design to noticing what the plants are doing and augmenting the design around them.

How can our readers contact you? You can reach me at my website: SarahGalloway.com. I’m also on Instagram and use the hashtag #wildinthegardenstate. o

Jaime Breeden is a journalism student at the University of Maryland and an intern this fall session with Washington Gardener.