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Dan Pearson on Landscape Design, Mindfulness & the Alchemy of Gardening

Homing

Thu Jan 22 2026

Summary

Homing Podcast: Dan Pearson on Landscape Design, Mindfulness & the Alchemy of Gardening

Host: Matt Gibberd
Guest: Dan Pearson
Date: January 22, 2026

Overview

In this evocative episode of Homing, host Matt Gibberd welcomes renowned landscape designer Dan Pearson for an in-depth conversation set in the outdoor kitchen of Dan’s Somerset home. Their discussion is an intimate journey into the meaning of home, the transformative power of nature, the personal process behind a career in landscape design, and how gardening becomes a form of mindfulness, creativity, and belonging. Pearson shares childhood memories, insights from a lifetime of working with landscapes, and offers practical wisdom for nurturing a meaningful home and garden—no matter the scale.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Formative Years and Place Attachment

Early Home:
Dan's childhood in Hampshire/Sussex was deeply shaped by a dilapidated Arts and Crafts house, overgrown gardens, and loving, creative parents.
- “Mum fell in love with the building and the feeling of this house, which was rather wonderful... It was an Arts and Crafts building...the garden...was literally pressing against all the windows.” (03:08)
Garden Restoration as Family Bond: Dan and his family spent years reclaiming the garden, unearthing orchards, greenhouses, ponds, and old trees, which gave a sense of adventure and discovery.
First Gardening Experiences:
Dan and his father each took borders to clear and plant, reflecting the household passion for making, creativity, and process.
- "We did the right-hand border and dad did the left...talked about the progress of both...I had the beginnings of an art school training before I left home.” (09:04–10:47)

Gardening as Mindfulness & Emotional Well-being

Gardening as Grounding:
For Dan, gardening is an essential source of well-being and an antidote to life's volatility.
- “The gardening for me is a complete mainline access route into feeling better. You're based in real time, you can't rush it and I think that's enormously grounding.” (00:03 & 58:17)
Home as Sanctuary:
The idea of home is deeply emotional—“a sanctuary, a place that the outside world doesn't need to exist…somewhere that’s self-defining.” (11:43)
Mindfulness Routine:
Dan meditates daily and finds parallels between the meditative state and the mindfulness evoked by engaging with the garden.
- “I am pretty good actually at meditating twice a day…early in the morning and then again in the evening. And that’s been something that I’ve been doing for the last two years and have been meaning to do my whole life.” (54:31)

Creative Process & Professional Journey

Non-traditional Path:
Dan describes leaving school before A-levels to pursue horticulture, guided by his mother’s advice to follow his heart.
- “Mum said to me…why don't you follow your heart and we find the best way of you doing horticulture?…As soon as she said, why don't we see…the best way of you doing something that you love, why didn't you follow your heart?” (20:33)
Blending Art and Gardening:
Influences from parents, art, and early mentors led to his approach where the emotional and sensory experience of place is central.
- “There is an intellectual idea in there, but it's not necessarily the thing that you're wearing on the sleeve…it's more about the feeling of something being right in its place.” (28:24)
Notable Clients & Creative Collaborators:
Worked for influential names (e.g., Jony Ive, Paul Smith, Jurgen Teller) and grew his practice via creative word of mouth and television exposure.
- “You suddenly find yourself in this place that you'd never have dreamed of being at when you were gardening at Wisley as a teenager.” (25:38)

Philosophy of Landscape and Belonging

Place Identity & Control:
Feeling rooted comes from physical and emotional engagement with land; Dan talks about the subtle line between controlling and collaborating with nature.
- “It’s all about the line, I think, it’s all about...an invisible line. And sometimes it's further away and sometimes it's closer…and you can tighten the string so it's tighter, or let it go from year to year.” (45:42)
- Visual metaphor: How their 20-acre property is managed like the expanding ripples from a stone dropped in water (47:57).
Spirituality of Place:
Describes his work as inviting a sense of serenity, subtle sensuality, and even spirituality.
- “People often say when they come into the places, they've been taken somewhere…there's a spiritual quality to the places because you're being rooted in something that's often quite subliminal, something you don't quite understand, but is essential and sensual...” (30:58)

Human Connection, Solitude & Sharing

Solitude vs. Loneliness:
Gardening as chosen solitude rather than loneliness—“you choose to be alone when you’re gardening, but maybe solitary is the better word” (59:39).
Gardening as Social Bridge:
Best conversations often happen side by side in the garden; this is mirrored in Maggie’s Centres, where green spaces facilitate comfort and dialogue.
- “As soon as men started working together in the garden, that's when the conversations happened.” (59:50)

Practical Wisdom & Advice

For Gardeners at Any Scale:
- Don’t rush; take time to observe and learn from your environment (65:59).
- Start with what you have—windowsills, indoor plants, allotments—all can nurture attachment and creativity.
- Allow kids the freedom to make a mess in nature and experiment.
- It’s okay to make mistakes; learning comes from doing.

Memorable Anecdotes & Quotes

On Emotional Attachment to Home:
- “I think you’re extremely lucky in this life if you’re able to be in a stable environment with your kids and that provided that place.” (12:04)
On Social Sensitivity & Differentness:
- “I felt like I was affected by things deeply…There was an unknown element about the natural world that there wasn't with people. People are more scary.” (33:31)
On the Alchemy of Gardening:
- “I think I just understood that there was an alchemy in the process…if you allowed yourself to be part of the alchemy…it’s about nurturing…it’s about day-to-day observation…” (16:52)
On Home as a Hub:
- “The house is the hub and it's a really nice feeling…all these lines are our views and places we go to out from the house. But the house is where all the lines…the stories you bring back, that's where they're all revealed.” (43:42)
On Nature and City:
- “It was exhausting to be made to feel small by a man-made thing. That's what I've loved about Japan so much…you're often encouraged to be in those intimate places. The small is beautiful." (35:34)
Closing Reflection:
- “It’s a refuge, it’s an oasis, it’s an opportunity, it’s a luxury, it’s a safe place. It’s somewhere we can share with other people.” (64:36)

Important Timestamps & Segments

[03:08] — Dan’s description of his childhood home and the transformative effect of restoring the garden.
[07:57] — On the importance of process over results in caring for a place.
[16:52] — The "alchemy" of gardening and nurturing as a reciprocal act.
[20:33] — Turning point: choosing horticulture over conventional education.
[28:24] — The evolution of his work with prominent clients and maintaining creative authenticity.
[30:58 – 32:26] — Defining the Dan Pearson garden: language, spirituality, and atmosphere.
[43:42] — How the house acts as a central hub; connection between landscape and dwelling.
[45:42 – 47:57] — Managing the line between control and wildness in land stewardship.
[54:31–57:27] — Establishing and reflecting on a daily meditation practice.
[59:39] — On gardening as mindful solitude (not loneliness).
[65:59] — Practical advice for new gardeners: start small, observe, and be unafraid of mistakes.

Notable Quotes (with Attribution & Timestamps)

“The gardening for me is a complete mainline access route into feeling better. You're based in real time, you can't rush it and I think that's enormously grounding.”
—Dan Pearson, (00:03, 58:17)
“I think you’re extremely lucky in this life if you’re able to be in a stable environment when you're kids and that provided that place.”
—Dan Pearson, (12:04)
“There is a spiritual quality to the places because you're being rooted in something that's often quite subliminal, something you don't quite understand, but is essential and sensual and important in some way.”
—Dan Pearson, (30:58)
“It was exhausting to be made to feel small by a man-made thing. That's what I've loved about Japan...the small is beautiful.”
—Dan Pearson, (35:34)
“It’s a refuge, it’s an oasis, it’s an opportunity, it’s a luxury, it’s a safe place. It’s somewhere we can share with other people...”
—Dan Pearson, (64:36)
“Don’t rush it. Take time to look. I think that’s the key thing.”
—Dan Pearson, (65:59)

Conclusion

This episode is a rich meditation on the interwoven themes of home, creativity, nature, and identity. Dan Pearson’s reflections invite listeners to see their personal environments—no matter how grand or humble—as living canvases enlivened by attentive care, presence, and gentle experimentation. Through stories, practical advice, and deep emotional honesty, this conversation offers profound inspiration for anyone looking to cultivate a home that roots and restores them.

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Transcript

Dan Pearson (0:03)

I felt like I was affected by things deeply. The world that I made for myself was a safe place in a way. There was an unknown element about the natural world that there wasn't with people. People are more scary. The gardening for me is a complete mainline access route into feeling better. You're based in real time, you can't rush it and I think that's enormously grounding. You know, it's somewhere that's self defining and somewhere that I loved.

Interviewer (possibly Matt Gibbard) (0:36)

Why does it make you emotional talking about that?

Dan Pearson (0:38)

I think you're extremely lucky in this life if you're able to be in a stable environment with your kids and that provided that place.

Narrator/Host (Matt Gibbard) (0:50)

Hello and welcome to Homing. My name's Matt Gibbard. As a parent, I know you're not supposed to have favorites, but I am particularly excited about sharing this episode. Today's guest is the wise and wonderful landscape designer, Dan Pearson. Over the course of a 40 year career, Dan's designed everything from a forest garden in Japan to private gardens for the likes of Jony I've, Paul Smith and Jurgen Teller. Together with his partner Hugh Morgan, he also produces Dig Delve, an influential online journal documenting what they're planting, harvesting and cooking in their own garden in Somerset. I recorded this conversation with Dan in their outdoor kitchen where they prepare and eat food all year round, whatever the weather coming in over freezing hill. He also took me on a tour of his incredible garden and Japanese inspired studio which is available to Homing members on Patreon. Spending time with Dan, it becomes clear that working with the landscape isn't just his profession, it's how he understands himself and the world around him. For the past 15 years, he's been gently shaping the land around his home and slowly putting down routes of his own. This is a conversation about living in rhythm with nature and about learning to belong to a landscape rather than trying to master it. I hope you enjoy listening.

Interviewer (possibly Matt Gibbard) (2:17)

Hi Dan, thanks for being on the podcast. So, starting at the beginning, where did you spend your earliest years? Because I've read that you, you lived in an arts and crafts cottage in sort of Hampshire, Sussex way. But what age were you there from? And, and did you have a place before that?

Dan Pearson (2:34)

Yes, we were brought up in. In Hampshire. Yeah, Hampshire Sussex border. And mum and dad had a house, Victorian house, in a sort of small group of houses in some woodland outside the village. And there was an old lady called Miss Joy who lived along the lane behind an enormous hedge which had sprawled into the lane. And all you could see of the house was A chimney with a tree growing out of it. There was a hole in the hedge that she would come out of in the autumn with windfall apples which she'd leave on people's doorsteps.

Dan Pearson (3:08)

And she was very wayward looking and she made her own hats and seemed very, very old to, you know, somebody under 10. And when Ms. Joy, eventually, she had a series of strokes and Mum befriended the executor, who was a neighbor. And when Ms. Joy eventually died, Mum went in to see what was behind the hedge, this hole in the hedge. And Mum had been brought up in vicarages during, you know, the war time. And so she'd been brought up in big buildings, rather wonderful buildings, cold, big houses with histories, because her dad was a vicar. So she's got this interest in architecture. She's always been interested. And she found this building which Ms. Joy had been living in since the early 1900s, and it was an acre of garden that had overwhelmed her and was literally pressing against all the windows. And there was rat holes under every single door and vegetation got in through the windows and underneath the skirting boards and was wrapped around the furniture in the house. And Mum fell in love with the building and the feeling of this house, which was rather wonderful. It was an Arts and Crafts building a builder had built, obviously, because he was interested in the era. So it wasn't like a Latin standard, but it had many of those beautiful details and aesthetics, but built by a builder, so it was still really interesting, but very, very dilapidated. And Mum and Dad bought it. When Mum took her mother to see it, her mother cried because it was so overwhelming. And as children it was terrifying. My brother and I were terrified of it, in a good way. You know, it was like. It was scary. It had corridors and, you know, darkness and vegetation again, as I was saying, pressed up against the windows. And we spent the next. Until I left home at 17, the next kind of, I suppose, what, seven or eight years, clearing this garden to find this rather wonderful garden underneath the undergrowth. And Mum and Dad then spent all their spare time, they were both teaching, doing this house up by themselves. So that became a life project. So home there was very, very important. We didn't really go on family holidays because there's always an adventure of discovering something new in the garden. Like we discovered an orchard, we discovered an old greenhouse at the bottom. Everything on a small scale. It wasn't grand. We discovered a pond under the undergrowth and there were amazing old trees which were all falling down. And it was a very, very wonderful and Strong, potent atmosphere. And the building had. In Ms. Joy's room, which was. She lived in two rooms downstairs. The kitchen was piled high with copies of the Sunday Times, literally almost touching the ceiling. And she had these little corridors in the kitchen between sight, Ms. Havisham's. There were swags of cobwebs from the corners of the room to the light fittings in the middle. The curtains had rotted up from the floor. There were dust sheets over all the furniture in the rooms that weren't being used. She used two rooms, and underneath each piece of furniture there was a perfect imprint of dust where the woodworm had been eating away at the furniture. So it was kind of a wonderful place. And so we were brought up. I moved into this house that had this incredibly strong identity and sense of place. And in clearing the garden, which had an equally strong identity and sense of place, you know, I fell in love with this whole idea of the natural world. Really what happens to a place when it's taken over by nature and people are overwhelmed? You know, it's been a constant kind of dialogue in my work of that teetering point between things being care maintained and nature having the upper hand. You know, that naturalistic feeling that's so wonderful. And it's something I revisit all the time. And interestingly, I think because the home was so important to us as a family there, and because I've always gardened, I like to be rooted in one place. Place or rooted in a place by being engaged with it and doing, rather than somebody else doing it or not getting your hands dirty.

Dan Pearson (21:49)

Well, sorry, Wisley is the Royal Horticultural Society's kind of flagship garden in Surrey. And at that point they had an apprenticeship for students between 17 and 19, which is why I needed to leave school before my A levels to study horticulture. And it was basically, you worked in the garden, you did course studies on a Wednesday and then you. You did studies in the evening to supplement the work that you did in the garden. So for them, it was like youthful labour in the garden. They gave you some teaching in turn. It was like a proper apprenticeship. And I was like this major sponge. I just went there and just absolutely loved the learning and the gardening and being taught by people who spent lifetimes learning about specific aspects of horticulture. And for me, I was really ready to leave school. You know, I just didn't want to be there. I didn't want to be in that confined environment. It wasn't the right place for me at that time. And Wisley ended up being a great stepping stone to move on to other things. But just in terms of the maverick thing, when I finished Wisley, I looked into doing landscape architecture. And I could have done that, but it felt very dry because at that point there was less of a crossover into the world of the arts. So it was very much more about architecture outside. And I knew that I wanted to include the plants and I knew I wanted to make places with plants. I didn't want to just garden plants, I wanted to make places with plants. So I then went, I thought, okay, well, I'll study more and I'll find more about plants. So I can basically work anywhere I want to with plants. Because I'd become interested in travel by that point and seeing plants in the wild, which was that connection back to Ms. Noyes, Geraldine Noyes, going out to look at plants in the wild. So I then got a place. I spent a year at Edinburgh Botanics and I met a whole load of people, wonderful people, who became my first gardening friends, really. We went out to look at plants in the wild on the west coast and wild west coast gardens. And then we went on, we got a small scholarship to visit the mountains in northern Spain. And everything opened up for me then and I came back down to Kew for three years, did a course there, which was like a degree course really, in horticulture. And meanwhile, I'd already started making a garden for a friend of mom, son she worked with. And so I sort of started the process of garden making and applying horticulture to making places with plants. So I didn't study landscape architecture. I found a way into making landscapes and through work. Now we employ. I've got a wonderful team of people, most of whom are landscape architects. So they've got the skills I haven't. I've got stronger skills in horticulture that they might not have through just studying the landscape architecture. And we're making plant led environments. Yep. And working with some really interesting people. So there's crossover into the art world, this crossover into the interesting architectural word world, you know, institutions that are doing interesting things and, you know, you suddenly find yourself in this place that you'd never have dreamed of being at when you were gardening at Wisley as a teenager.

Dan Pearson (25:43)

I think it's an interesting question. The first person I started working for to make a garden for age 17, when I was at Wisley 18 hours, was a wonderful woman called Frances Mossman, who's now become a really great friend. And she was teaching. She'd set up next in the early 80s, and so she was working in the commercial side of fashion, but she has always had interesting connections to other people in the more creative side of a commercial world of fashion. And. And she was friends with a woman called Priscilla Coluccio, whose husband is a man called Antonio Coluccio. She was Terence Comrade's sister. I made a garden for her. So when I started working with Francis, she said, there's somebody else I think you should work for. So when I left Kew, I set up my own business, basically working out the back of a yellow van and by myself. And I went to make a garden for Priscilla Coluccio, who was. She was the main buyer for the Comrade shop at that point. And being Terence's sister, you know, they were a creative family. So she taught me how to look at things in a very particular way, in terms of everything being connected and how to look at the essence of things. And she embedded that process of. So making the garden for her was an enormous education. Making the garden from Frances was an education because she was a textile person. So we'd create the garden looking at the plants with form, texture, color, all those things that you'd. If you were talking about a textile, you'd go through the same, like, what's the weave, what's the feel, what's, you know, all those same languages come into how we were looking at the way the garden was being made. So I had the art school training. I never got through working with these talented people again, often women. Then I ended up working with Terence on a big book, Terence Command. And then you suddenly find yourself in a different world. And then I was picked up because I was of a certain age, in my late 20s, and up and out there and doing things with quite an interesting crowd of people. I got picked up by TV and. And then I think you then become very visible very quickly or too quickly, and I think that's how people start to See what you're made of.

Dan Pearson (28:24)

So I think initially those. It was by word of mouth through a very interesting little tribe of people. And then the TV people picked up on that. And then you're suddenly out there in tv, and then what you find is that you lose complete control of it, and then you have to make your life smaller again. So during the time that I was doing tv, I worked on the first makeover programs. I loved it because it wasn't solitary. I was working with a very interesting production company, and we were making something quite fast, so you could turn ideas over really quickly. But TV is a hungry beast, and they don't look at you as an individual. They look at you as a product. So I just got sapped of all my creative energies. You know, it's like a hungry, hungry thing. And they want more, and they want more, and they want more. And you're projected into a world which isn't really anything about you as a person. So the Dan that was out there on TV is not the Dan that I feel I am. And the. There was this big displacement thing that happened that ended up with me getting completely overloaded and having a crisis at age 32 and thinking, okay, I can't do any of that. I've got to go back to concentrating on what I want to do. So I made a big stop, a big full stop, and then put my energy back into my safe world, which is the garden and making gardens and environments. So going back into that world of being on the ground with your feet rooted again, rather than out there with no control. So it's been. That's been quite an interesting part of it. But I think that now we're working with people that come to me for a particular thing that I'm doing, you know, And I think I was very lucky quite early on to be able to communicate what that was and to establish a kind of feeling around what I do, which is that the work is about an opportunity to get under the skin of things and make a place that might be more about a feeling than an intellectual idea, but it does something to you because it's taking you somewhere. And there is an intellectual idea in there, but it's not necessarily the thing that you're wearing on the sleeve. It's more about the feeling of something being right in its place. And there's a quietness about that which demands that you need to be in a quiet place to be able to do it properly.

Dan Pearson (61:19)

Well, I think it's interesting, isn't it, how people, as we get older, you often circle back to something that not all of us. Of course, if you're lucky enough to have had something, have the advantage of living somewhere when you're young that has meant something to you. People do circle back in this cycle that we're part of. And I was great friends with some really good friends in my twenties when I lived in a place called Bonington Square in Vauxhall. A lot of them were New Zealanders and they've circled back to home to New Zealand. You know, to feel part of something that's familiar to them, just the quality of being in a place that is ingrained in your system somehow. Whether it's the smell or the temperature or the food or the people or whatever it is that makes that post particular. I think it does become ingrained somehow and part of you. And I think for me, you know, there are aspects of this place which are same but very different to where I was brought up, you know, in terms of it being a safe place somewhere that's. I don't need to go anywhere from here. I don't ever go into Bath in our local town, once or twice a year, three times a year, I choose to go down there. It's four miles away. You know, we're very autonomous here. And I think that's one of the special things that I go to back to from Hill Cottage, that childhood home, you know, we. We never went anywhere from there unless we needed to, because it was. It provided everything for us. And I think that idea of safety and the home is, is. Is something that I return to very much. And also being part of a landscape, something that's a bit wilder than you, than you can control. That garden there, that's very nice to feel. There are places I can't control here. That feeling of being cooped up in London. I outgrew my places. A client of mine actually once said, you need potting on. And what she meant was, you're ready to move, you know, you need to move. And she was so right about getting out of London. And it was just an interesting analogy. And because I'd ended up, first of all, I ended up outgrowing my roof garden in Vauxhall, which was my first real home. And then I outgrew my garden in Peckham. You know, we didn't outgrow the house, I outgrew the gardens. And there's no way I can outgrow this place. It's going to outgrow me, probably, and I'll end up like Ms. Joy, overwhelmed by it one day.

Dan Pearson (68:56)

I think maybe just. Making them feel like it's somewhere they can go and make a mess. Yeah, mud pies. Basically. I started through, I had a troll collection. I always had a troll on the go. They were my friends. I loved them up to the age of five. And then I started making homes for the trolls out of bricks and mud. So there were like these little caves and the trolls lived in. And then I started making gardens on the top of the brick and mud caves. And then the gardens became the more interesting things and the trolls got the forgotten. But it was through messing around in the mud and noticing that I could make moss grow or plant a little seedling tree. And it was, I could grow a little seedling tree that was just through pottering around, making a mess and not feeling and just feeling like I had permission to do so and to get messy. We've been working with little forest school where the kids classroom is. It's actually outdoors. You know, they don't have an indoor place, they've got bivouacs. But it's preschool. Their experience of learning is all outside, whatever the weather. And it's just fantastic. You're just going and seeing what they can make out of a muddy puddle and some mud and a stick and some paper. And I remember playing around after it had rained, you know, with the rain that went down the lane, you know, making dams and, you know, that's probably the way into it. And then you find yourself before, you know, it you're growing and nurturing. And the first plant I was ever given was an amaryllis, which of course is guaranteed to grow. So I planted it and it flowered this great opulent flower. And the alchemy, going back to the alchemy, that was like the first time I realized that I was like, wow. I kind of was involved in that process. Terribly simple, but enabling, really, of something that is really. When you see kids who've got this connection, you know, I'm so all for nurturing it because even if they don't pursue it as a child, it's so often something they come back to. And most of my friends who took to gardening, you know, they, they always cite a grandfather or a parent or an aunt or somebody, a neighbor who did it, who asked them to be, I don't know, come and help on their allotment or whatever it was, or help them pick beans. You know, it was a simple way into it that then became something that allowed them to connect to cooking. So I've got friends who've got into growing things through cooking, you know, because they wanted to grow their own things and suddenly find that they're the most amazing vegetable gardener, you know, and then they're off or through, you know, starting with a new piece of ground, a new house, you know, a blank canvas.