Dan Pearson is one of the world’s most discerning and gifted garden designers, and his approach to his own garden is illuminating. Having moved to this windy 20-acre hillside farm near Bath in 2010, he and his life partner Huw Morgan created a garden that honours the rolling pastoral landscape that surrounds it.
Instead of a typical gentrified Cotswold aesthetic, Dan chose a farmyard vernacular, using breeze blocks and corrugated iron to form a modest backdrop for his adventurous planting. To avoid waste, paths are of crushed aggregate from the old concrete farmyards, now mellowed by mosses and self-seeders.
East of the house lies a garden of perennials with drifts of repeated planting that shines in the late summer and autumn after the surrounding meadows – over-sown with a mix of local wildflowers – have subsided.
The soft, rhythmic nature of this cultivated area, with its successive waves of interest, keys it seamlessly into the rural landscape.
The physical challenge of gardening on relentless slopes persuaded Dan to re-contour the land gently, creating an east-west spine of flat ground linking house and outbuildings. To the west is a sheltered outdoor kitchen and herb garden, largely Huw’s domain, with orchards and a nuttery beyond.
The fork-to-fork experience is key to the couple’s existence, since they aim to be largely self-sufficient. More recent additions include a naturalistic pond, which has improved the garden’s biodiversity dramatically, and an open, sunny, sheltered sand garden.
With the advent of hotter, drier summers, Dan is trialling Mediterranean plants that require freer-draining conditions than his hearty clay loam will provide. Early trial beds helped him to work out what suits his conditions, and to build up plant stocks.
A big draw was the variety of habitats Hillside offers, from wetland ditch to sunny, open ground, enabling Dan to grow thousands of different plants. As well as a private sanctuary, this is a proving ground for his design practice.
Clare Foster, House & Garden’s Garden Editor, says:
It is always a treat to have a glimpse into a designer's personal garden. The few times I have been to Dan Pearson's garden at Hillside near Bath are etched firmly in my mind, each one offering experiences in different seasons. Pearson is a designer who lives, breathes and sleeps plants, and he uses his own garden as an experimentation ground for his work.
The breathtaking perennial garden forms the main backbone of the site, designed to reach a peak in late summer and to fade beautifully in the autumn, when this set of photographs was taken. The advantage of a garden like this is that it's designed to evolve and change constantly. It never stands still, and this is part of its attraction.
Photographs and words are taken from Into the Garden: Private Sanctuaries Around the World, with an introduction by Clare Foster and texts by Juliet Roberts, Colleen Morris, et al, published by Phaidon, £39.95
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