Home Ground: Sanctuary in the City, by Dan Pearson
Ten years ago Dan Pearson found an extremely rare, large, neglected city plot and set out to design and create a garden space of his own. He admits that designing his own garden was one of the most difficult things he had ever done and in his new book ‘Home Ground: Sanctuary in the City’ we are entertained by his thoughts, observations and challenges that his garden presented in the course of a year.
Books which document a garden and gardener at work are never dull, their experiences reach out to the reader who can empathise with the decisions of what to keep and what to discard, what to grow and what not. Readers of ‘Home Ground’ will find quiet accord with many of his observations as his city garden matures and develops.
It is a diary written in ‘real time’ and beautifully photographed by Howard Sooley, treating us to an experience of gardening many will be familiar with. ‘Home Ground’ also offers us a unique insight into the work and thoughts of one of the world’s most respected garden designers.
Dan trained at RHS Garden Wisley and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, before beginning his career as a professional designer in 1987. He is a favourite of readers of The Observer, where he has a weekly gardening column and no stranger to our television screens where he has presented and appeared on BBC2, Channel 4 and Channel 5.
As he points out in the book, we all want to be transported somewhere entirely restful once we step out of our back doors: “Central, was the idea of the oasis, as I wanted to create a place that was an antidote to the hustle and bustle, the hard edges and the sheer number of people competing for space.”
For Dan, the importance of his garden was not just as an oasis, but also a place where he could experiment and continue to learn about raw materials. For him it is a place with its own life and rhythms - a place where he can actively garden rather than simply tend a garden.
Arranged by seasons, Dan shares the challenges of gardening his city plot in a series of diary like entries and thoughtful essays, documenting the horticultural tasks required each season and sharing his successes and failures on the way. There are extensive chapters on plant combinations, arriving at design decisions and maintenance. He looks at how to garden as organically as possible but with low-maintenance and he shares with us all the plants that have made it through and those that did not.
I like gardening books which have a ‘voice’ of their own, a narration which draws the reader in to experience alongside the author the successes, challenges and failures that gardening brings. In ‘Home Ground: Sanctuary in the City’ Dan Pearson does just that and it is a very enjoyable and informative journey.
Published by Conran (Octopus) Publishing, ‘Home Ground’ by Dan Pearson, costs £28 and is released March 2011.
