Dan Pearson (garden designer)

Dan Pearson (born 9 April 1964) is an English garden designer, landscape designer, journalist, and television presenter, specialising in naturalistic perennial planting.

Early life[]

Pearson was brought up in an Arts and Crafts house on the Hampshire–Sussex border.^[1] His father is a painter who taught fine art at Portsmouth Polytechnic^[1] and his mother taught fashion and textiles at Winchester School of Art.^[2]

Pearson was employed at a weekend gardening job for Mrs. Pumphrey at Greatham Mill Gardens, Hampshire,^[3] which cultivated his interest in gardening. Backed by his parents, at 17, he decided against going to art college and dropped out of his A levels to go to the RHS Garden, Wisley. This was approved by his parents and he became a RHS Wisley trainee on the certificate course.^[4] Pearson attended the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh for a year to work in the Rock Garden and the Woodland Garden and went on to complete the three-year Kew Gardens course. Following this he returned to his role maintaining Frances Mossman’s garden at Home Farm in Northampton.^[2] Mossman, was the creative force behind Next and, later, George at Asda and at Wedgwood.^[5] He also undertook student scholarships studying wildflower communities in the Picos de Europa, Spain, and in the Himalayas.^[6]

When he was 25, he was named house garden designer at the Conran Shop on Fulham Road.^[7] Then Pearson set up his garden design business in 1987.^[2]

Personal life[]

Pearson's younger brother,^[5] Luke, is a product and furniture designer and a partner in the company 'Pearsonlloyd'.^[8][9]

In 2010, Pearson and Huw Morgan restored a late 18th-century house (a 1,500-square-foot two-story buff-coloured stone building with small windows and 2 chimneys on a red-tiled roof,^[7]) with 20 acres of land outside Bath as their home and workplace,^[10] called 'Hillside'.^[7][11] In a broadcast interview with Kirsty Young on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, Pearson stated that he has known Morgan since the 1990s.

Career[]

Since 2002, he has designed gardens and has given lectures around the world, including in the U.K., Italy, U.S. and Japan. ^[12] He has designed gardens for Jonathan Ive, Paul Smith,^[1] art dealer Ivor Braka, real estate businessman Vladislav Doronin,^[13] Torrecchia Vecchia for Carlo Caracciolo (the late owner of the Italian newspaper l'Espresso),^[14] and his colleague on The Guardian newspaper, Nigel Slater (this garden was a joint effort with Monty Don).^[1] He restored the landscape at Althorp House (after Diana's death) after 1997 and worked on the landscape for the Millennium Dome.^[1] He has worked at the Botanic Garden of Jerusalem. He designed the roof garden of Roppongi Hills in Japan in 2002.^[6] Another large project was the Tokachi Millennium Forest Garden, in Shimizu, Hokkaido, which was featured on the BBC Radio 4 programme Designed in Britain, Built in Japan.^[15] Another project is Maggie's Centre in Charing Cross, London.^[16] In 2020, he designed a new courtyard garden for The Garden Museum in London.^[17]

Pearson has done six show gardens at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show^[2] including in 1992, 1993, 1994,^[18] 1996 (with an outstanding roof garden),^[19] and 2004 (for Merrill Lynch).^[20] In May 2015, he returned to Chelsea Flower Show with the 'Laurent-Perrier Chatsworth Garden', inspired by the Chatsworth estate in Derbyshire.^[21] It won a gold medal and 'Best in Show'.^[22]

He has working relationships with architects and architectural firms in the UK including Zaha Hadid, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, David Chipperfield Architects, and 6a Architects, London. Pearson was elected a Royal Designer for Industry in 2012.^[13] Pearson was the horticultural advisor for Thomas Heatherwick's cancelled Garden Bridge, over the Thames in London.^[23]

Honours[]

Pearson is a tree ambassador for The Tree Council and a member of the Society of Garden Designers. In 2011, he was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects and was a member of the jury for the 2011 RIBA Stirling Prize.^[6] At the Garden Media Guild Awards of 2011, he was awarded the prize for 'Inspirational Book of the Year'.^[24]

The Garden Museum in Lambeth, London, held an exhibition on his work in 2013. Pearson created a new planting design for the border in front of the Museum.^[13]

He was the Winner of the 'House & Garden Garden Designer of the Year' award in 2019 and is listed in House & Garden (magazine), as one of the top 50 garden designers in the UK.^[25]

Television and radio career[]

Pearson has presented and appeared in several TV series on BBC2, Channel 4 and Channel 5. In 1992, he presented his first garden makeover programme, Garden Doctors. A book of the same name later followed the series.^[13] He presented Dan Pearson: Routes around the World on Channel 4, a six-part travel and horticultural series by Flashback Productions, in 1997.^[26] In 2001, the BBC filmed a 12-part series, A Year At Home Farm, in Northampton, for which Dan had been designing the gardens since 1987.^[27] A book later also followed the series. He appears occasionally on BBC's Gardeners' World, and also regularly talks on radio,^[6] including appearing on Front Row on BBC Radio 4 about the Royal Academy's 2016 exhibition 'Painting the Garden: Monet to Matisse'.^[28]

Writing[]

Pearson has written for such newspapers as The Guardian, The Telegraph (during 2003–2006),^[20] and The Sunday Times on the subject of landscaping and home gardening. He was the garden columnist for The Observer Magazine from 2006 to 2015.^[29] He sits on the editorial board of Gardens Illustrated magazine and also writes for Gardeners' World magazine.^[6]

Books[]

• Pearson, Dan (1996). Garden Doctors (A Channel Four book). Boxtree Press Ltd. ISBN 978-0752210292. Co-authored with Steve Bradley^[30]
• Pearson, Dan (27 Feb 1998). 'The Essential Garden Book'. Conran Octopus Ltd. ISBN 978-1850299196. Co-authored with Sir Terence Conran^[31]
• Pearson, Dan (4 Jan 2001). The Garden: A Year at Home Farm. Ebury Press. ISBN 978-0091870324.^[32]
• Pearson, Dan (3 October 2011) [First published 28 September 2009 (as hardback)]. Spirit: Garden Inspiration. FUEL. ISBN 978-0956356291. Introduction by Beth Chatto^[33]
• Pearson, Dan (7 March 2011). Home Ground: Sanctuary in the City. Conran Octopus. ISBN 978-1840915372.^[34]
• Pearson, Dan (4 May 2017). Natural Selection: A Year in the Garden. Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-1783351176.^[35]

References[]

External links[]

• Dan Pearson Studio Dan Pearson's Garden Design Company site
• Presenters BBC Gardener's World