British landscape designer Dan Pearson to speak in Beverly Hills
When landscape designer Dan Pearson gave a talk in Seattle a few years ago, he wasn’t interested in touring local gardens while in town. Instead, he asked his hosts to arrange a visit to Mt. St. Helens.
“The whole power of nature was never more clearly seen,” he recently recalled, speaking by telephone from Dan Pearson Studio in London. In creating landscapes, residential or public, the designer said he wants to understand the natural context of places -- an approach outlined in his new book, “Spirit: Garden Inspiration,” and in a lecture scheduled for Tuesday at Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, a benefit for the Garden Conservancy.
Pearson is a horticultural rock star in the U.K., with boyish locks, an engaging personality and dreamy landscapes. He designed five award-winning gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show, writes a regular column for the Observer newspaper of London and appears on BBC television and radio gardening programs. He said “Spirit” is a memoir-scrapbook of his ideas about letting the environment guide the domestic landscape. The book contains essays and photos of the plants, places and people that have influenced his designs.
“I want to encourage the reader to look at the world with perhaps a slower pace and in a more observant way, to see differences and nuances,” he said. A home garden should express the landscape’s natural qualities, whether the setting is urban or wild. “In an urban situation, for example, that influence may not always be about plants,” he said. “A place can be simply beautiful because of the way the light falls. If you know that, you can create a special experience.”
Pearson has created gardens in Japan and Italy, but his design studio has yet to take on a U.S. commission. It’s not that Pearson hasn’t considered how he would approach garden design here, however.
“If I were to take on a project in Los Angeles, the first thing I would do is go out and look at the local, natural areas, because that would give me all the reference I would need to interpret that aesthetic and that balance that’s already been achieved through millennia,” the designer said. “I was shocked when I first went to Los Angeles and saw all of the green lawns and water. In no distance at all, I was in Joshua Tree, which has its own absolutely beautiful identity and range of plants.”
“An Evening With Dan Pearson” starts at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Greystone. The $100 admission includes a cocktail reception; registration is required: www.gardenconservancy.org. For more information, call (845) 265-2029.
-- Debra Prinzing