Renowned landscape designer Dan Pearson's Somerset garden, Hillside, offers a masterclass in working with the land rather than against it. Starting with a property "held together with baler twine and goodwill," Pearson has created something extraordinary—a biodiverse meadow and kitchen garden that pulses with natural rhythm.
His approach is refreshingly honest: "Sometimes, you do lose control and then, you have to be happy about that." This isn't garden design as dominance, but as dialogue. Pearson talks about creating conversations between plants, letting them establish their own rhythms and stopping places that guide visitors naturally through the space.
"It's a process of nurturing, giving something your best and then allowing it to be itself. There are points where you can just take your foot completely off the pedal and it can shine. It's there where the magic happens, I think—that kind of point of letting go and submitting to some degree to the natural orders."
The magic happens in those moments of surrender—when you "take your foot completely off the pedal" and let the garden shine on its own terms. It's a philosophy that extends beyond horticulture into how we approach any creative work: nurture something with your best effort, then allow it to become itself.
The takeaway? True mastery might not be about perfect control, but about knowing when to let go and trust the process. Sometimes the most beautiful results come from embracing the unexpected—even when a tree crashes down and "annihilates something that you've had all best plans for."