Dan Pearson has a new book out. I love it. It is a book that tries to capture the 'spirit' of a range of places that have inspired him, either personally or in his professional role as a garden designer. It is motivated by the same interests and ambitions as this blog, to explore a sense of place. Except its by Dan Pearson so obviously it's much better. I'm a bit envious. In an inspired way.
He starts out by attempting to articulate what he is trying to achieve. To capture the mood or spirit of a range of places "and explain why they matter." For him:
"Spirit of place derives as much from the way a place is thought about or used as it does from its physical aspects.. It may be strongly enhanced by the place being written about or painted, put to music or indeed shaped by the hand of man giving it focus. It lies in the invisible weave of culture. The stories, the art, the memories, the beliefs, the histories, the monuments, the boundaries, the rivers, woods and architectural style are all key to the way in which we relate to our surroundings." (p.9)
Essentially the book is an encouragement to spend more time looking, feeling and experiencing places. Taking the time to look. His own looking takes him far and wide encompassing locations on most continents. And ranges in scale from very specific scupltures or features in a landscape to whole countries or regions.
The book will likely be found in the gardening sections in most bookshops. Loosely it is a gardening book. And it includes a number of distinctly gardened areas (Rousham, Huntington, Kirstenbosch). But it is more about how a way of looking can be used to find inspiration for garden design or to gain more enjoyment and pleasure from any place you find yourself in (garden or otherwise), rather than a technical manual or design guide. Its about a gardeners eyes and ears and senses and way of seeing more than his method or approach.
That is not completely true. A handful of the places he writes about are the locations of projects he's worked on including an eco park in Hokkaido, Japan and a wonderful garden "on the brink of being overwhelmed by nature" (p.203) in Torrecchia near Rome. The latter particularly gives a wonderful sense of how he applies his way of looking to creating somewhere that is genuinely a unique place, rather than a mere garden.It is a fitting conclusion to his jounrey through many other places.
The book succeeds through its eclecticism. I was nervous to begin with that the selection of places may be slightly patrician. A creeping sense of sterility resulting from an excess of places that have basically been engineered by the wealthy. But alongside a few stately homes or botanical gardens are community gardens in New York or a sustainable woodland project or a fading memorial. A varied richness of places in the plural. His 'looking' approach has the huge virtue of finding something interesting everywhere. Every location is rich in detail and reasons to want to get straight there and start exploring oneself. I started the section on Rousham with a slight sense of 'here we go another stately home garden,' and ended up keen to visit to explore some of the details of William Kent's pioneering designs, not least his sweeping rill and the transition between different magical areas within the garden. In fact that is how the book works best. Allowing the intricate details of a place to add up through words and photographs until you are almost anticipating looking up from the book to see these features yourself.
If the book has a weakness it is that perhaps despite the breadth of its definition of the elements that constitute a place, it is sometimes lacking in the people that make them. It's a little rooted in an aesthetic landscape tradition where the landscape is a text to be read rather than a living, breathing entity to be lived in. As someone who loves photographing places in an attempt to capture their spirit I often reflect on my tendency to photograph the landscape rather than the people in it. Or the people I'm with. Really places are shared experiences. But these are much harder to capture than landscapes or details or features.Texts are easier.
In fairness I think this is also inevitable with a book written by a single voice. It's his view of the places he views and as much a biography and an effort to ascribe personal influence as a guide to the places themselves. It perhaps says a little about the classic top down 'single author' design he practices relative to the emerging forms of community centred, collaborative or co-created design. But it is a rich insight into the inspiration he draws from in that.
Let us conclude with an example of the almost monastic approach he brings to reflecting on a landscape, a brief Dan Pearson guide to 'looking for the spirit' taken from his account of daily walks he took through the Cabo de Gata in Andalucia:
"I often wonder whether it is the silence and the space that comes with it, that allows you to tune into the detail, but the heightened awareness is triggered as much by the repetition of routine; the meditation. It allows you to build a consciousness that is cumulative and informed by what has come before, each layer, like the lichens, adding to the depth of colour and the dynamism of the place...This is what the days here are about and each of the senses is teased out of hiding as you come to be in the moment. A blinding, white hot day will allow you to concentrate on the sound and weight of your footfall, the hiss of the wind in the tussocky grasses, the still as you descend into the hollows and the smell of rosemary and thyme. Evening light will reveal the landscape differently so that another range of senses come into play when your eyes are no longer struggling" (p.181).
