In this series of films with Dan Pearson we have heard him speak about his mentors, his ‘career’ decisions and the lessons he has learnt professionally. In this film all the other conversations converge. We meet Dan at home, at his latest and most personal project – a 20-acre smallholding in the English countryside.
This is his third summer here and he feels he is just ‘getting his eye in’ and beginning to understand to ‘unlock’ the landscape around him. This is a long-term project – Dan says he is happy for it to take ten or twenty years. Not only are gardens an environment which contain history, materiality, time and light but in observing them we are also looking at how people have used them and how we will use the space. That takes time; it should as Dan says be, ‘discovered gently’.
