User:DafyddHMorgan/Dan Pearson

Dan Pearson Dan Pearson is a British landscape and garden designer with an international reputation for design and planting excellence.

Biography Dan was born in Windsor in 1964. After developing an interest in gardening at a very young age he trained at the RHS Gardens’ Wisley and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Student scholarships to study wildflower communities in the Picos de Europa, Spain and the Himalayas, and 2 years spent working at the Jerusalem and Edinburgh Botanic Gardens respectively, gave Dan an innate understanding of how plants relate to their surroundings and natural growing conditions. This understanding, together with an appreciation of natural landscapes and landforms, are the primary inspiration for his work. Dan began his professional career as a garden and landscape designer in 1987, and was one of the earliest and youngest contemporary practitioners of naturalistic perennial planting in the UK.

Dan Pearson Studio, his London based design practice, handles a wide range of projects internationally for private and public clients comprising private gardens, public spaces, architectural landscaping, public parks and civic plantings. The practice frequently collaborates with award-winning architectural firms including Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, Allies & Morrison, David Chipperfield Architects, Hopkins Architects and Conran & Partners.

Dan’s work is characterised by an instinctive response to the sense of place resulting in the creation of unique site-specific environments. Of principal importance are the relationships between spaces and the creation of holistic environments with distinctive moods.

Primary consideration is given to the boundaries between interior and exterior space, the seating of buildings within landscape and to the dialogue between ornamental garden spaces and the wider landscape. A key strength of the his designs lies in a simple foundation of hard landscaping intended to create comfortable, usable spaces that are overlaid with loose, bold and painterly naturalistic plantings. The studio is committed to creating sustainable landscapes to the highest environmental specifications and prioritises the creation of better environments for wildlife and people, whilst making as gentle a mark on the land as possible.

Dan has been a weekly newspaper gardening columnist for over 14 years, spending 9 years at The Sunday Times, followed by a period at The Daily Telegraph. He has been writing for The Observer magazine since 2006. He sits on the Editorial Board of Gardens Illustrated magazine. He was joint author of The Essential Garden Book with Sir Terence Conran and author of The Garden: A Year At Home Farm, Spirit: Garden Inspiration and Home Ground: Sanctuary in the City. He has designed five award-winning Chelsea Flower Show gardens and has presented and appeared in TV series on BBC2, Channel 4 and Channel 5. He appears regularly on radio and lectures widely. Dan 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 is a member of the Jury for the 2011 RIBA Stirling Prize for Architecture.

Key Works 1987 Home Farm, Northamptonshire 1989 Ivy House Farm, Hampshire 1997 Althorp House, Northamptonshire 1999 The Millennium Dome, London 2000 Roppongi Hills, Tokyo 2001 Broughton Hall, Yorkshire 2002 The Tokachi Millennium Forest, Hokkaido, Japan 2005 Evelina Children's Hospital, London 2008 The Maggie's Centre, London>