Historic garden conservation is a specialised type of historic preservation and restoration concerned with historical and landmark gardens and designed landscapes. Practitioners predominantly come from backgrounds in horticulture, garden design, landscape design, and landscape architecture. To prepare a management plan for a historic garden, such experts require knowledge and skills in environmental design, horticulture, landscape history, and architectural history, and management. Specialist educational programs are available.
Historic garden restoration is the professional task of restoring historic gardens to the character they had at a previous point in history. Since the use of old gardens is in flux, this normally involves a consideration of current and future use. The job of researching historic gardens and preparing a policy for their conservation involves landscape archaeology, historic knowledge, design judgment and technical skill in horticulture and construction.
Recent and ongoing UK examples of garden conservation and restoration include Lowther Castle in Cumbria, Lever Park in Lancashire, Biddulph Grange in Staffordshire, Wrest Park in Bedfordshire and the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall.
Famous quotes containing the words historic, garden and/or restoration:
“We are becoming like cats, slyly parasitic, enjoying an indifferent domesticity. Nice and snug in “the social” our historic passions have withdrawn into the glow of an artificial cosiness, and our half-closed eyes now seek little other than the peaceful parade of television pictures.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“In comparison to the French Revolution, the American Revolution has come to seem a parochial and rather dull event. This, despite the fact that the American Revolution was successful—realizing the purposes of the revolutionaries and establishing a durable political regime—while the French Revolution was a resounding failure, devouring its own children and leading to an imperial despotism, followed by an eventual restoration of the monarchy.”
—Irving Kristol (b. 1920)