Why Gardeners Should Make A Bouquet Every Day

Superstar designer and planstman Dan Pearson explains why you should make a garden posy every day.

WHAT THE PROS KNOW | There’s plenty of great how-to in Home Ground: Sanctuary In The City, British designer and writer Dan Pearson’s 2011 gardening book that will surely become a classic, but the author’s suggestion that keeners make a daily bouquet from whatever’s in bloom in their garden seems like a particularly good idea. Could there be an easier way to become more observant outdoors or to study the blooming habits and idiosyncrasies of the plants that grow right under your nose?

Pearson is an award-winning designer and true plantsman who makes gardens for the rich and design literate (Apple’s Jonathan Ive and fashion superstar Paul Smith are clients). “Artistic, but not over-conceptualized,” is how The Guardian writer Geraldine Bedell described his work on the eve of his 2006 debut as a columnist for the The Observer.

Pearson’s idea for posy making was inspired by a neighbour he knew in his childhood who displayed freshly cut garden flowers in a jam jar on her kitchen table every day. As an adult, Person has followed in her footsteps by making informal daily bouquets as a way to observe plants close up, to appreciate their fragrance or the way they change as they go through their life cycle.

Pearson’s posies are loose, unstructured arrangements, a collision of colours, textures and forms that come together without a lot of fuss: “The construction of the posy is not something you should think about too much,” he writes. After all, one objective here is to see what new possibilities for planting materialize when visually disparate forces are combined. —Carolann Rule

For more on Pearson’s work, check out his website, danpearsonstudio.com. CLICK HERE to read his columns in The Observer. CLICK HERE To find out more about his book Home Ground: Sanctuary In The City.

Photos: Howard Sooley from Home Ground: Sanctuary In The City