The celebrated English landscape designer Dan Pearson really knows how to read the room \u2014 the outdoor room \u2014 drawing on an uncanny instinct for divining what goes where and a depth of patience many of us gardeners might well be wise to cultivate.<\/p>\n
He was already a leader in the naturalistic movement with an impressive global portfolio of projects<\/a> when he came to Hillside, the place he now calls home, in Somerset, England. Before making his first design move there, though, he nevertheless allowed himself six years to \u201cstart a dialogue\u201d with the place (his words, and a key to his process). A more practical timeline \u2014 one year \u2014 is what he typically suggests to clients.<\/p>\n \u201cYou need to grow a garden, don\u2019t you?\u201d he said. \u201cAnd even just the ideas \u2014 you need to grow those ideas. So there\u2019s much to be said, I think, for taking the time to understand something.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Pearson\u2019s landscapes are immersive, existing in a magical borderline between control and abandon, what he calls \u201cthe teetering point\u201d between a maintained space and one where nature holds sway. He draws on intuition and hands-on practice honed since childhood, when he helped his parents uncover the Arts and Crafts home they\u2019d bought that was positively engulfed by the wildness of a long-neglected garden.<\/p>\n For gardeners experimenting with pivoting to a looser landscaping style, that delicious teetering point may prove an elusive destination. Where does he take his cues from that gradually alert him to what it can become?<\/p>\n He shared some of his thinking:<\/p>\n Hey, not so fast.<\/p>\n Mr. Pearson never hurries toward design decisions. At Hillside, which is also the backdrop of the online magazine \u201cDig Delve\u201d<\/a> that he and his partner, Huw Morgan, publish, he had the luxury of indulging in those six years of getting acquainted with the land, \u201cto look, and plan my first move,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t undertake any garden-making on the 20-acre former farm before that, beyond growing vegetables and trialing some plants \u2014 the start of his knowledge-gathering about the soil and climate \u2014 and reseeding old pasture.<\/p>\n By the time he started 10 years ago on what are now 1.5 acres of gardens that intimately anchor the house and other buildings, all but a handful of \u201cthe 50 options I had when I had first looked at the site had fallen away,\u201d he said. Only those really worth pursuing stuck.<\/p>\n Even a year offers a chance to observe and listen to each season, he said: \u201cIs there a wind we need to shelter from in March? Where does the light reach in the darkest month? Where do you need shade in the hottest month? Is there something that happens on the site that\u2019s a magical moment that you want to be part of or have more of \u2014 and then you build from that.\u201d<\/p>\n Important: Make notes of your first impressions, but resist analyzing.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like meeting a new person and getting a feeling from that person, but not judging,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n This \u201cobservational research,\u201d as he describes it, is the foundation of everything to come.<\/p>\n A design lesson at the woodland edge<\/p>\n It\u2019s no coincidence that Mr. Pearson uses terms like \u201cinformal\u201d and \u201cled by asymmetry rather than symmetry\u201d and \u201clayered\u201d to describe his naturalistic compositions, for those are among nature\u2019s foundational design principles (and key concepts to keep in mind).<\/p>\n Go stand at the edge of the woods, he said, and look at how the adjacent habitats coexist. You will not see symmetry, but lots of layers.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve got the trees which form the shade,\u201d he said, \u201cand then the layering of sub-shrubs or shrubs underneath the trees, which are more kind of human scale. And then you\u2019ve got the perennials which come and go throughout the course of that relatively short season underneath the shade.\u201d<\/p>\n The layering continues out into the sunnier areas, enacted by a different cast of plants. Even in a relatively narrow palette, they\u2019re all working together, each performing in its time before the next one takes a turn, creating a succession through the seasons.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re all interdependent,\u201d Mr. Pearson said, \u201cand the layering allows you to have miniature ecologies. It allows you to have moments where things are happening and then they can dim. It allows you to have continuity, ephemerality.\u201d<\/p>\n Is there a view or the suggestion of one?<\/p>\n Views, whether borrowed or created, enlarge the experience of a landscape, and Mr. Pearson\u2019s home at Hillside, as its name hints at, is long on them.<\/p>\n