My home, their film set

Paul is a laid-back, restaurant-owning bachelor who lives in a bohemian bungalow in Los Angeles. He is played by Mark Ruffalo. His ramshackle kitchen is teetering with piles of clutter, his bedroom is spartan and his garden, at least at first, is a near-dead yard. It's a world away from the more suburban, pulled-together home of gay couple Nic and Jules, played by Annette Bening and Julianne Moore.

In reality, graphic designer Jessica Fleischmann lives in this arty, clapboard house in the hilly neighbourhood of Echo Park, LA.

Two years ago, there was a knock on Fleischmann's door. It was a Hollywood location scout with a big smile. He told Fleischmann her house looked perfect for a film he was working on – would she be interested in renting it out for a few weeks? The money was decent, and particularly welcome after a tough financial year. Oh, and there was one more thing. Her terraced garden, the one she'd nurtured for years, would be dug up and replaced with weeds and lifeless plants – temporarily – to reflect the character in the movie.

"I was a little hesitant and asked people I knew in the film industry what they thought," says Fleischmann, who teaches at Otis College of Art and Design and runs a design studio from her home. "It was a bad year for work, and they were offering $15,000 [£9,000]. People said: 'If you need the money, do it – but be prepared to have things broken.'"

The scout, Charles Fagin, had been scouring Fleischmann's neighbourhood for houses after no suitable matches turned up in the location service's files. "I knew as soon as I saw her back yard that this was the house," he says. Of the 50 houses in the running, Fleischmann's was selected.

To help establish credibility, Fleischmann was told right away of the actors involved, and of the relatively low $4m budget. Fagin gave her a copy of the script and explained the terms: they'd paint some rooms, but they'd repaint them after the shoot; anything they drilled into, they'd fix; and her garden, which they'd dig up, would be replanted.

Prep on the house began in July 2009. The crew, under production designer Julie Berghoff, painted the white living room a blue-toned shade of grey. They brought in a more masculine-looking sofa, from director Lisa Cholodenko's house, and a bed for an important sex scene. ("You're not using mine!" Fleischmann told them.) It actually worked to Fleischmann's advantage that they had to drill holes in the ceiling to rig up the lights. "It meant they had to repaint it," she says, "and it needed to be painted anyway."

Handling her California-Mediterranean garden was a more delicate matter. In the film, Paul's plot is withered, before Jules transforms it into a lush garden, so production landscaper Christine Eyer brought in about 400 square feet of overgrown sod weeks before the shoot and left it unwatered so it would turn brown. She bought sickly, weed-infested plants from nurseries; collected discarded plants from landscapers' job sites; and dug up wild grasses off a hillside in Malibu. "We used the trimmings to cover up existing plants that we couldn't remove," Eyer says.

"It was so ironic," Fleischmann says. "I worked really hard on my garden, and it took years to get rid of the weeds, and then I watched them haul in bags of dead grass." She did make one important request: make sure the seed heads were removed from the weeds so they wouldn't contaminate her garden.

For the shoot, which took place over four days in August, Fleischmann agreed to be out of her house, opting to stay with friends. But she visited every day, not only to access her studio but also on the recommendation of friends in the industry. "It's important to be there," she says, "otherwise, they might destroy your house. It's not that they're bad people, but their main interest is in getting the shot."

Once, while passing through, she crossed paths with Moore. "She was really polite and thanked me," says Fleischmann, who decided against arranging a formal meeting with the actors, a gesture the producers are willing to make. "I thought, 'They're professionals, they're working, and what am I going to say to them?' I did have a mild fantasy that by being in my house they'd want to be my best friends," she says, laughing, "but obviously they've been in the homes of far more interesting people."

Fortunately for Fleischmann, the shoot went well. Yes, a few items were lost, and a grubby handprint or two was left on a wall. And she had to have her living room repainted after the scenic painters' first attempt. But overall, she says, it was a good experience. The blue-grey walls helped her decide on a more neutral shade of grey, and after seeing her place so minimally accessorised, she realised she didn't need so many trinkets.

What was it like seeing her home on the big screen? "When I saw the film for the first time, I was mostly watching the house. They used a lot of my artwork, and even left some personal cards and drawings on my fridge. I felt like a proud parent, particularly as one review said something about the locations being characters that contributed to the movie," Fleischmann says. "But it also made me think about the potential similarities between this guy and me, which made me a little uncomfortable. Am I as in denial about growing up as he is?

"I don't know that I'd do it again. If you're attached to your home like I am, it's a big disruption. But if you are having a bad year and they make it worth your while, I'd say go ahead."

And what did this devoted gardener think of the one Jules designed for Paul? "It was all wrong," Fleischmann says. "They put in semi-tropical plants that require a lot of water – that's not eco-conscious, like the characters in the movie. I asked why – they said they got plants they could afford, and they had to be big and dramatic. It's all about looking good for the camera."