Millenium Forest, Courtesy of Cornucopia Productions Limited, 2012
Millenium Forest, Courtesy of Cornucopia Productions Limited, 2012
Dan Pearson
Dan Pearson
The Old Rectory, Courtesy of Cornucopia Production Ltd, 2012
The Old Rectory, Courtesy of Cornucopia Production Ltd, 2012
Current Exhibition
Green Fuse: The Work of Dan Pearson
23 May 2013 - 20 October 2013
Dan Pearson is one of the most significant landscape and garden designers working today. From contemporary reinterpretations of historic Arts & Crafts gardens to complex public realm urban landscapes and inspiring landscape parks, Pearson creates masterful and original outdoor environments.
He is equally at ease designing a private garden for prominent international clients in London as designing a woodland landscape for a space-age house in the forest outside Moscow with Zaha Hadid, restoring a Lutyens/Jekyll estate as creating an ambitious new estate in Devon, or creating a city park in the heart of King’s Cross as a mountainside ecological park at the northernmost tip of Japan. The Garden Museum is pleased to be presenting an exhibition of his work in collaboration with his award-winning studio, sponsored by Coutts.
The exhibition explores the breadth and depth of Dan Pearson’s landscape design, tracing the roots of his career as a plantsman and designer, looking at his education and influences and focusing on a number of key projects and their inspiration.
The exhibition will be an immersive, multimedia experience where space, materials and craftmanship are as carefully considered as rhythm, colour, texture and seasonality in planting to create spaces which are emotionally uplifting and have a distinctive sense of place. The exhibition will explore the fundamental importance of the idea of sense of place in Dan’s work, the intuitive quality of his informally trained design eye and the horticulturally rigorous, yet painterly quality of his plantings.
Starting with the most formative early influences nurtured at his childhood home, which sowed the seeds of Dan’s passion for plants and nature, the exhibition builds a picture of how the accumulation of education, inspiration and experience led Dan to create the iconic garden at Home Farm for Frances Mossman at the age of 22, come to the attention of design luminaries Priscilla Carluccio, Terence Conran and Ilse Crawford in the early ‘90’s, restore the landscape at Althorp House, following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and work on the landscape for the Millennium Dome with Sir Richard Rogers in 1999.
This last job gave Dan an appetite for public and architectural work which has guided his output for the last decade and a half, resulting in working relationships with some of the most interesting architects practising in the UK including Zaha Hadid, Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, David Chipperfield Architects and 6a Architects. These working relationships have contributed to Dan being elected an Honorary Fellow of the RIBA in 2011 and a Royal Designer for Industry in 2012.
Simultaneously Dan has been the designer of choice for a variety of private gardens both in the UK and abroad for clients including Sir Paul Smith, Sir Jonathan Ive, Sir John Sorrell, Carlo Carraciolo (the late owner of Italian newspaper l’Espresso), art dealer Ivor Braka, cookery writer, Nigel Slater and Russian businessman, Vladislav Doronin. What unites all of his private clients is their appreciation of his quiet, considered approach, artistic eye and ability to create places with presence whilst never imposing a design aesthetic upon the space or the client.
Alongside his career as a plantsman and designer Dan has also had a successful television and journalism career. In 1992 he presented the first garden makeover programme, Garden Doctors, followed by Routes Around the World, where Dan looked at gardens in America and Japan, stimulating an enduring fascination for that country and its culture. His writing career began at The Sunday Times and The Telegraph. For the past 8 years he has been garden columnist for The Observer Magazine.
Dan Pearson Studio has funded three specially commissioned films for the exhibition of projects completed in the last five years.
Green Fuse: The Work of Dan Pearson Trailer, Courtesy of Cornucopia Productions Ltd, 2012
Dan has also created a new planting design for the border in front of the Museum, which will be installed in time for the exhibition opening. The planting scheme uses elements of Dan’s work at the Tokachi Millennium Forest, employing a mix of woodland floor species, with dramatic accents and a sculptural element.
Michael Morley, Chief Executive, Coutts & Co commented: ‘Coutts’ support of horticulture dates back to when Angela Burdett-Coutts was Patroness of the Highgate Horticultural Society and founded the famous Columbia Road flower market in London’s East End that still exists today. We continue to work with landowners and entrepreneurs, many of whom have built successful businesses in fresh produce and sustainability. Last year we launched our own kitchen garden with over 9,000 plants on the roof terrace of our London headquarters. We look forward to building on the success of this through our partnership with the Garden Museum and the Green Fuse: The Work of Dan Pearson exhibition’.
For press enquiries please contact Benjamin O’Connor: benjamin@gardenmuseum.org.uk
To find out more about events related to the exhibition click here.
