Tip of the Week: Dan Pearson Creates Visual Wonderlands
Posted in Gardening Tips, People on February 16 2010, by Sonia Uyterhoeven
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Sonia Uyterhoeven is Gardener for Public Education. |
Just like Beethoven took ordinary musical notes and elevated them through simple and complex melodies into his immortal symphonies, the well-known British landscape designer Dan Pearson (right) has the ability to transform space into visual wonderlands.
Pearson was at the Garden last month for the first of three lectures in the series From the Ground Up: Gardens Re-Imagined. He presented Into the Wild, an exploration into his natural landscapes.
I was prepared for a talk on how a talented designer re-creates the artifact of nature on his project sites—not as nature would herself but as an artist reinterpreting and reconfiguring nature’s portrait. This point was certainly made and beautifully illustrated.
What I came home with, however, was a much more intimate view into Pearson’s artistic process. His began with his childhood experiences of gardening and his early travels, which helped define his aesthetic sense. Throughout his discussions of sense of place, the audience was invited into his personal vision of how he saw and experienced nature.
His childhood story was one of discovering an overgrown garden, viewing it as an untamed paradise and then proceeding to reclaim the land while respecting its natural order. This experience informed his subsequent designs, which retained a child’s sense of mystery and wonder and awe.
In a highly personal and unassuming manner, Pearson then discussed his conceptual process. I was impressed with his involvement in the sites he was designing—how he thought out the use of the space and the experience he wanted to create—and in his amazing ability to transform spaces to actualize his vision.
He taught me how a designer sees and responds to the spaces that he (or she) is presented with. What happens when you enter a garden? What do you see? How, as a designer, do you engage the visitor’s thoughts and senses? In his discussions of balance, contrast, contour, and space Pearson demonstrated how he acts as the visual, spatial, and artistic director in his garden designs.
Whether simple or complex, his designs draw you in and invite you to explore, appreciate, and inhabit the space. I was excited to discover that Pearson is a passionate environmentalist and a committed educator. He guided his audience into his natural world so that they could sit with him in these magical spaces, learn from nature, and go on to act as its stewards.
In my next blog, I’ll share some of the specifics of Pearson’s design process. For those of you hungry for more creative thinkers, next up in the lecture series From the Ground Up is Barbara Damrosch, author of The Garden Primer. She’ll talk about year-round food gardening on February 18th, beginning at 10 a.m. She is a gardening guru—come join us! Register early as seating is limited. Fritz Haeg will round out the series on March 25.
