This is the first of 6 films on 451 with Dan Pearson covering his life in gardening and his gardens. First shown at his retrospective in the Garden Museum in London they reveal perfectly, in stages, his progression as a designer and plantsman. They also tell us something about gardening as a process, about taking time, looking around us, feeling comfortable in a space and about what harmony in the natural world means when you dissect it and try to replicate it.
In this first film Dan talks about his early inspirations such as the family garden pond where he lay everyday of one summer holiday watching the water turn green and observing the ‘alchemy’ as the green cleared. He also talks about his early mentors such as Geraldine Noyes quoted in the caption and the beginnings of his discovery of the balance of nature and what we disturb when we try to meddle and how we can combine the ornamental and the wild.
