A garden that works every month of the year

Spring, summer, autumn, winter: since at least Roman times, and centuries before Vivaldi set them to music in 1720, the West has divided the year into four seasons. However, gardeners know that this is too broad a brushstroke, as a blossom that appears in early spring will do its bit for a week or two, maybe staggering on until mid-season, but will be well and truly over when late spring arrives. The same goes for the remaining traditional “seasons” – which makes at least 12 flowering periods to be considered.

In Japan, however, they take things further. In a tradition inherited from ancient China, the year is made up of 24 sekki, or seasonal divisions, and can also be split into 72 ko: microseasons that each last five days and are associated with specific festivals, rituals and flowers.

Not all apply to the UK, or even to what is going on in most contemporary Japanese gardens: 9-13 February, for example, is koo kenkan su, when the bush warblers start singing in the mountains, while 27-31 December is sawashika no tsuno otsuru, when deer shed antlers. Where the sekki tradition does resonate, however, is in a heightened awareness of the natural world and a closer attention to what is happening in the garden during the cycle of the year. 

Dan Pearson, who was awarded an OBE in 2022 for services to garden and landscape design, has long been inspired by Japan. For the past 20 years, he has been working on the 240-hectare Tokachi Millennium Forest in Hokkaido, following sekki principles in collaboration with head gardener Midori Shintani.

Here, as in his other work, from the Trout Stream at Chatsworth in Derbyshire and Lowther Castle in Cumbria to Hillside, his home in Somerset, Pearson’s primary influence is that of the natural world: he uses native plants where he can and encourages biodiversity.

In his latest large-scale project, at Goodwood House in West Sussex, Pearson is working with native and manmade environments, bringing them together with something of the spirit of sekki. Creating 24 seasonal “moments” in woodland, fields and glades, he hopes that his planting will guide visitors through trails around Goodwood Art Foundation, which opened in May.

“I could probably count 50 ‘moments’ that are going to happen once the gardens are established,” Pearson says, explaining that each will link to the next. “It is really a device to get people thinking about these micro-seasons, and about succession and continuity.” He illustrates the idea with the image of a British bluebell wood: a hazy, intoxicating carpet of blue in late spring, which quietens down to shades of green as the canopy of trees grows over, until the leaves start turning in autumn to create another splash.

As with the bluebell wood, or a native wildflower meadow, while a single plant may have its charms, it is often only when you see them en masse that they reveal their full glory. For example, Pearson has planted 25 cherry plums, which blossom early against a dark background of native conifers.

He has added a host of pheasant’s eye daffodils, which flower in late spring, and, near the café, a group of Judas trees to give a shock of violet flowers in April, with heart-shaped leaves turning yellow in autumn. In an oval clearing that will be used for gatherings, he is planting a glade of 150 Himalayan birches. 

While Goodwood’s “moments” are designed to encourage visitors to explore the landscape and the sculptures within it, the presiding aesthetic applies equally to our private gardens, and requires us to tweak our mindset as well as clarifying the planting – having the patience to wait for those “moments” and the courage and discipline to plant a particular species or combination at scale in order to make a focused impact. So an area comes to the front of the stage for a few days or weeks, then retreats to the wings while another takes its place. Not every part of a garden has to be in the spotlight all the time.

Pearson’s principles of repetition, layering and successional planting, with an eye to encouraging biodiversity, is “nothing different from the way I work, wherever I am”. The impact comes not from stuffing in lots of diverse plants, but from focusing on fewer varieties in repetition, which will come together for their “moment” before being succeeded by another display later in the year. The concept could even work in a small urban garden. “We’re able to plant 150 hazels at Goodwood, but it might be that you use three hazels, then interweave those with three witch hazels and add something like a spindle between those for the autumn as the basis of your woody planting.”

The show isn’t confined to the shrubs. “You might follow by planting a hellebore under each of the three hazels, and asters under the spindle for the autumn. So you have three different moments that repeat throughout the space and take your eye from place to place – you’re not just focusing on one thing in one corner.”

As ever, the environment shows both Pearson and the private gardener the way: “I am just taking what happens in a natural woodland, then transposing those rhythms into philosophy.” 

danpearsonstudio.com

This story also appears in the new Portfolio magazine. Register here for your exclusive copy