The spirit of a landscape has bewitched him since childhood. Now, in his beautiful new book, Dan Pearson reveals the majestic places that have inspired his lifetime's work

I have been taking photographs of landscapes, gardens and environments since I was a teenager, to try to capture moods and to explain why they matter. It is a subject that has fascinated me since I was a child, as I was brought up in a house that, for the best part of 50 years, had been overwhelmed by the garden of the previous owner. It was a magical world of its own. A tangle that gave evidence of a life that had been lived there and the knot that nature had tied around it. The legacy of that experience inspired in me a passion to understand what it is that makes a place particular and, today, this is the driving force and the inspiration for my work as a landscape designer.

As the Design Museum releases a book on the 50 Chairs That Changed the World, Huma Qureshi chooses her personal favourites

Walk in the footsteps of someone great – buy a home with an English Heritage blue plaque