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:
“The first farmer was the first man, and all historic nobility rests on possession and use of land.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I confidently predict the collapse of capitalism and the beginning of history. Something will go wrong in the machinery that converts money into money, the banking system will collapse totally, and we will be left having to barter to stay alive. Those who can dig in their garden will have a better chance than the rest. I’ll be all right; I’ve got a few veg.”
—Margaret Drabble (b. 1939)
“The King [Charles II] after the Restoration accused the poet, Edmund Waller, of having made finer verses in praise of Oliver Cromwell than of himself; to which he agreed, saying, that Fiction was the soul of Poetry.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)