SpeakerDan Pearson is a landscape designer that trained at the RHS Garden Wisley and the Royal Botanic Gardens.
Student scholarships to study wildflower communities in the Picos de Europa, Spain and the Himalayas, and two years spent working at the Jerusalem and Edinburgh Botanic Gardens gave Pearson an innate understanding of how plants relate to their surroundings and natural growing conditions.
This understanding, together with an appreciation of natural landscapes and landforms, are the primary inspiration for his work. Pearson began his professional career as a garden and landscape designer in 1987, and was one of the earliest contemporary practitioners of naturalistic perennial planting in the UK.Pearson has been a weekly newspaper gardening columnist for over 14 years, writing for The Observer magazine since 2006. He sits on the editorial board of Gardens Illustrated magazine. He was joint author of The Essential Garden Book with Sir Terence Conran and author of The Garden: A Year At Home Farm, Spirit: Garden Inspiration and Home Ground: Sanctuary in the City.
He has designed five award-winning Chelsea Flower Show gardens and has presented and appeared in TV series on BBC2, Channel 4 and Channel 5. He regularly talks on radio and lectures widely.
Pearson is a tree ambassador for The Tree Council and a member of the Society of Garden Designers. In 2011 he was elected an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects and was a member of the jury for the 2011 RIBA Stirling Prize, which was awarded to Zaha Hadid’s Evelyn Grace Academy.