From a small valley in Somerset he has called home since 2010, British landscape designer, horticulturalist, gardener and writer Dan Pearson OBE has turned his intuitive planting approach to establishing a vast garden on an undulating private plot. Set on a soft incline behind Hillside, the home he shares with his partner and studio co-director Huw Morgan, the garden began as a former smallholding used to raise beef cattle, from which Pearson took on the project of managing the land to increase its native flora, transforming heavily grazed pasture into biodiverse meadows.
Cultivating the space in conversation with the landscape, Pearson considers the ornamental garden an evolving site for experimentation, connected by snaking pathways, designing a painterly planting scheme entirely at home in its rural setting, against what he describes as the “borrowed view” of land that lies beyond. Directed by Toby Amies… read more at nowness.com
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My gardening was my secret I didn’t share it
with any other kids at school because it wasn’t cool I just felt they wouldn’t understand Most of my friends were elderly ladies really keen gardeners, wonderful people that I hung out with for the weekends
and learned from I just felt like it was
something very private My name is Dan Pearson We are at Hillside which is my garden in Somerset When we acquired the property it was held together
with baler twine and goodwill It was a blank canvas Friends of ours said,
“This is a life work” Now we find ourselves
on this journey that is endless Gardening is real time It’s where you disengage because you’re working with seasons you’re working with time that’s beyond us We can’t manage it We just have to work with what we’re given and then respond
according to what the season’s telling us This place is all about
harnessing the views The borrowed view which is the land beyond yours is something that I’ve used
again and again in how this garden is composed The garden sits in a spine
that’s on a level with the house and stretches out to the east with the sun pouring over it
in the morning And then, in between
the barn and the house there’s the kitchen garden
where we garden on flat ground Beyond the barn there’s a new garden,
which we call the sand garden There’s a dialogue in the planting Once you get that dialogue
between the plants you then start to get
these beautiful changes in rhythm which can lead you through stopping places pausing places where it intensifies
or just moves you on very naturally The paths are like the beat If this was a piece of music,
they’d be like the constant One of the things that I always try to do
when I’m designing is to think about how you might unlock
the sensual world Gardens are deeply sensual places Sound is incredibly important If you just turn off your thinking
and then just start listening there are layers and layers
and layers of sound in here and of course,
they’re very different just out there where you’ve got the breeze,
and here it’s still This place is all about tuning into things
which might at first be subliminal You lead people
towards finding those things and then becoming present It wouldn’t be the same
if we weren’t working on this together It’s very much a shared vision We’re both providing
the momentum and the energy which goes into making this place work Hugh tends to focus
on the growing of the vegetables I’m hardly involved with that at all I’m providing the momentum for things
beyond the kitchen garden Sharing a dream, really It’s a process of nurturing,
giving something your best and then allowing it to be itself There are points where you can just
take your foot completely off the pedal and it can shine It’s there where
the magic happens, I think that kind of point of letting go and submitting to some degree
to the natural orders When you’re gardening this closely
to just losing control you’re really pushing the boundaries,
your own boundaries Sometimes, you do lose control and then, you have to be happy about that The beauty of being involved
in this process is there’s always something to replace it You just have to keep
a very open mind about the future because you’re always going to lose things One of these trees will come crashing down and annihilate something
that you’ve had all best plans for and then, you just have to change
and move with it
20 Comments
Nice to see Nowness back in a garden…… more please
What a total delight it was to make this film
It reminds me of Piet Oudolf.
Nature is a gift from God.
Oh, I like his jacket too.
For me, this video is more than just about an amazing garden; it's about life itself.
Will we get a return of the great gardens series?
YES!! thank you for gardens!
How wonderfully life-affirming & non intrusive. It's art.
Beautiful video, really refreshing.
Really curious about him saying that "there is a dialogue between the plants…", and I take it to mean that this dialogue is potentially one starting point in conceiving how the garden might look, or in a way how the garden wants to look. I wonder if that's what he means by that, how much it's designed and pre-planned (imposed) and how much it's sort of discovered and felt (as in grown from existing potentials of the land).
I suppose the way he approaches this tension is one of the reasons the garden feels curated but still beautifully wild.
Thank you so much for giving us an opportunity to share this beautiful place.
Beautiful. Breathtaking. I watched it several times. Thank you!
Wonderful, magical garde. Dan is such a visionary and creates such beautiful gardens.
For those interested all of Dan’s books and Create Academy courses are amazing!
Beautiful! He is such an interesting guy
Bliss, thank you for this zen meditation moment.
a place in balance
love this so much please continue to cover more such videos
Heaven on earth..
Amazing.
4:03 raising a garden and raising children are so similar 😊
Thank you for sharing your garden , I remember when you first had the garden it’s wonderful what you’ve achieved , the pond is now amazing I remember when you dug it out . I love your comment about loosing control sometime , I feel like that at the moment as some of my trees are struggling with this drought but as you say you just have to go through it and hopefully rain will come soon.
lovely