Dan Pearson (garden designer)

Dan Pearson ( born April 9, 1964 in Hampshire ) is an English garden designer.

Life

Pearson is the son of a painter, at Portsmouth Polytechnic taught art and was an avid gardener. His mother taught fashion and textile design. At the age of five years he was interested in plants and began to garden. 1976 his father took him to the Chelsea Flower Show and the status of Beth Chatto impressed him very much. He left school with the average maturity (O -levels ) and graduated from September 1981 to 1983 in the garden of the Royal Horticultural Society in Wisley the Certificate Course. At the age of 17, he designed his first garden for Frances Mossman, a friend of his mother. Pearson then an intern with a stipend in the Botanical Garden of Jerusalem, from where he made many excursions and undertook a trip to the Himalayas. Subsequently, he worked for a year at the Botanical Garden of Edinburgh, in the rock garden and woodland garden. After he was trained for three years in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.

In 1987 he started his own business. 1990-1992 he worked for Conran Shop as Gartenbestalter and consultants. He now runs his own office, " The Nursery ". It was created by Conran & Partners in a former school " The Chandlery " near Waterloo. In 2008, he had seven employees. The team also includes qualified landscape architects who are familiar with planning and building permits.

Pearson wrote weekly columns for the Sunday Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Observer since 2006 as the successor of the jewelery designer Monty Don and also one of the editors of the magazine " Gardens Illustrated " on. The handsome Pearson joined since 1993 in several television series, which is also represented by BBC2 ( Gardeners World ), Channel 4 (Garden Doctors, 1994-1995) and Channel 5 were aired and was on the radio. The program " Garden Doctors" belongs to the genre of popular especially in the United Kingdom, but also in the USA genre of "Garden makeover shows", where private gardens are transformed within a specified time by a team of experts, not always to their advantage. However, it differs from similar programs around by Allan Titchmarsh fact that not only private gardens of terraced houses and country estates, but also community gardens, eco- gardens and facade greening were supervised and to some projects over several years dragged on. For the television show " Gardener 's World", he created in 1998, as well as John Brookes and Bonita Bulaitis, a garden in Kings Heath Park in Birmingham.

Pearson designed since 1992 five gardens in the Chelsea Flower Show, including the 2004 Merrill Lynch Garden and won a 1996 Silver -gilt medal for " A London Roof garden for the Nineties". It contained silver birches, beach thrift and fescue in large round steel containers, herbs and wild plants such as fuller's teasel and mullein against a bright red background. Meanwhile, Pearson rejects this temporary show gardens as too artificial and rather focuses on permanent gardens.

Pearson lived in Bonnington Square in Vauxhall, where he designed a rooftop garden. Here grew next to Mediterranean plants such as lavender and fennel grasses and exotics such as the South African torch lilies and by Christopher Lloyd made ​​popular Patagonian verbena. He also campaigned for the preservation of the local Bonnington Square Garden and was involved along with Jimmy Frazer at his transformation. He then moved with his partner Huw Morgan, the office manager of his office, in a terraced house in Peckham, south London. In his book, "Home Ground", he described how he ran the overgrown back garden gradually transformed into a very relaxed and informal garden full of flowers, shrubs and bushes, and also an allotment ( allotment ). The development of the garden was documented by the photographer Howard Sooley. Meanwhile, Pearson and Morgan moved to Somerset, where they farm 10 km north of Bath in Hillside a garden of 8 ha. The development of his garden there is since 2012 the subject of his Sunday column in The Observer.

Debra Prinzing Pearson describes as the " horticultural rockstar in the UK".

Memberships and Awards

Pearson is a member of the Society of Garden Designers and since 2011 Honorary Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Pearson was never judges the more conservative RHS and feels rejected by the British Garden Establisment. The Garden Museum in Lambeth dedicated to his work in 2013 an exhibition.

Style

Pearson works in the tradition of " New Perennial Style" by Wolfgang Oehme and Piet Oudolf. He knows the needs of its plants well and presents them accordingly together carefully. He often uses native wild plants, especially shrubs, perennials and resulted also in the planting of small urban gardens. Rounded walls lend his early gardens a rhythmic design. Only his vegetable and fruit gardens are often designed formal. With the use of perennials and grasses, he led German and Dutch elements in the conservative English garden tradition. Pearson also took Japanese elements in his style, even if he has difficulties in practice with the Japanese mentality.

Pearson is known for its gardens and the landscape unobtrusively adapted and not the British tradition of ornamental gardens with " mixed border " ( mixed borders ) follow in the tradition of Jekyll and Lloyd. He tries to respond to the idea of his clients. For Pearson imperfection is beautiful. Perfect gardens and " uptight minimalism " he refuses, but he appreciates the work of the Spanish minimalists Fernando Caruncho. Beth Chatto also influenced his style.

Pearson estimates warm colors in the garden, especially red, rust red and golden yellow, and often used wild plants. One of his favorite plants include mullein, Daylily ' Stafford ', Patagonian verbena and ornamental grass Stipa tenuissima, among the crops hazel and wild arugula.

Publications

• With Steve Bradley: Garden Doctors, a Channel Four Book. Boxtree 1996. ISBN 978-0752210292
• Terence Conran: The Essential Garden Book, getting back to basics. Clarkson Potter, 1998.
• Spirit: Garden Inspiration. London, Murray & Sorrell FUEL 2009.
• Home Ground: Sanctuary in the City ( photograph Howard Sooley ). Octopus Publishing, 2011.

Gardens

• Barnes, Mossman Garden
• Broughton Hall, Yorkshire, the industrial park. Roger Tempest / Rural Solutions, 2001-2008.
• Hamadayama in Tokyo, New settlement of Mitsui Fudosan Building Co., from 2006.
• Home Farm, Northamptonshire, now transformed
• Maggie 's Centre, Charing Cross Hospital in Hammersmith. 2005-2008, Garden cancer clinic
• Millennium Forest, Hokkaido Garden Festival, Japan, 250 ha
• Worthington Hospital, Sussex as part of the "Art in Hospital " project together with sculptors Peter Randall Page and Steve Geliot.
• Garden for Violante Visconti, Italy.
• Garden of Priscilla Carluccio, Elle Decoration
• West Handyside Park, Kings Cross