Garden History
Understanding the history of a garden and park is essential to its conservation and managing changes. This page outlines the range of methods used to research, investigate and analyse historic landscapes.
Some of the techniques that we use
Investigation of a historic park and garden may involve many different methods and techniques:
- Documentary and archive research. This could include maps and plans, estate papers, drawings, painting, photographs, postcards, local authority records and so on
- Modern photographs, aerial and satellite photographs, and maps
- Field walking to identify surviving and lost historic features
- Garden archaeology including remote sensing techniques like lidar
- Buildings survey
- Tree survey
- Wildlife and habitat survey
- Geology and soils survey
Historic England's garden history research is available in our Research Report database. Two examples are:
Rebecca Pullen, 2016: Reginald Farrer's Rock Garden, Clapham, North Yorkshire: Analytical Survey and Assessment. Historic England Research Report 7/2016
Magnus Alexander, 2013: Wrest Park, Silsoe Bedfordshire: Archaeological Landscape Investigations. Historic England Research Report 6/2013
Recording and analysing historic parks and gardens
Research will typically need to look at:
- Historic and modern boundaries
- Entrances and approaches
- Principal building and other buildings and structures
- Formal gardens
- The park
- Kitchen garden
- Outliers (detached features of the park and garden and land separated from the main area like distant follies) and other land
- Views and vistas
Further reading
Historic England advice on conservation management plans for parks and gardens
Chris Currie 2005: Garden Archaeology: A Handbook
David Lambert 2006: Parks and Gardens: A Researchers Guide to Sources for Designed Landscapes
ICOMOS-UK 1999: Guidelines on Archaeology in the Management of Gardens Parks and Estates
'Survey and Assessment' pages 117-163 in Marion Harney ed 2014: Historic Building Conservation
John Watkins and Tom Wright eds 2007: The Management and Maintenance of Historic Parks and Gardens. The English Heritage Handbook
For information on garden history courses see the Gardens Trust website
