New Growth at the Parks & Gardens UK Project

Photograph of (from left to right) Leslie Johansen-Salters (Volunteer Coordinator), Lucy Hand (Volunteer Coordinator), Malcolm Hand (Project Board), Caroline Palmer (Volunteer Coordinator), Helen Lazenby (Communications Coordinator), Jon Finch (Project Board) and Patricia Shepherd (Volunteer Coordinator).

Exciting news, we have now made five extremely important appointments. These are the Volunteer Coordinators who will be the contacts for the many volunteers who are keen to make a contribution to the project. They will each cover groups of counties across the country. If you haven’t met someone from the project or if you would like to volunteer to help then please get in touch with your Volunteer Coordinator (details below, headed 'Volunteer Coordinators')
Earlier in November I gave a talk to members of the Association of Gardens Trusts at the Swedenborg Hall. I had to think of a simile for the work that we had done since I spoke there back in March. It came to mind that the Parks & Gardens UK project in that time has been like a tree grown from seed. So far we have been growing in many ways but the shoots are only now ready to start showing above the soil.

The first stage in the growth of the Parks & Gardens project has been developing a project staff. We began with the technical team and a communications coordinator. The technical team; John Warden – Data Manager and Janet Davis – Web Manager, have been working hard to draw up a detailed specification for the project data-base and web-site. They have also been working away on recruiting a company to actually build the system that they have specified. We are pleased to announce that we have agreed and signed a contract with Altcom, a firm based in Cornwall with a strong track record in web based data-bases for public use. The work on the data-base and web-site will be starting immediately and you can expect to see the results sprouting above the soil in the spring.

Our Communications Coordinator, Sarah Collins, is now on Maternity Leave and expecting her baby around Christmas time. We are really pleased to have Helen Lazenby taking on Sarah’s role while she is away.

One last piece of news is a change in the staff. Having tended the project through the formative stages I am moving to a different role as Community Archaeologist for York. I will be keeping a close eye on the project and encouraging people to think about recording gardens as part of their historical and archaeological projects. I am pleased to be able to tell you that my replacement has already been appointed. Rachael Sturgeon will be starting work on 11th December and will be using her extensive project management skills to guide the project through the next very exciting stages.

Dr Jon Kenny, Parks & Gardens UK

Volunteer Coordinators

Liz Chalstrey

Contact e-mail: echalstreyATwaitrose.com

Counties covered: Avon, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Somerset, Surrey and Wiltshire.

Liz has a background in journalism and public relations, spending many years organising outdoor events for the National Trust. Liz has a degree in journalism and an MA in Nation, Language and Culture from Southampton University. Her interest in garden history and historical gardens developed initially from her work with the National Trust, and, more practically later on, from being owner of part of a Gertrude Jekyll garden in Surrey. This prompted her to join the Surrey Gardens Trust. Now based in Hampshire she is currently a member of the Hampshire Gardens Trust Research Group.

Lucy Hand

Contact e-mail: loocyhATyahoo.com

Counties covered: Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, London, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire and Warwickshire.

Lucy's major career history originates from Australia where she was born and grew up. She studied Landscape Design (Assoc Dip of Applied Science, Landscape). She practiced amenity horticulture for many years. She then moved into conservation in the role of Tree Preservation Officer at Local Government level, developing conservation & management strategies, community education and environmental projects. Once settled in the UK Lucy has returned to horticulture. She sees her new position with this project as a valuable opportunity to be involved again with conservation, and to fulfil a passion to learn of the valuable historical resources within the UK.

Leslie Johansen-Salters

Contact e-mail: ljs124ATyork.ac.uk

Counties covered: Cheshire, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Northumbria, Nottinghamshire, Shropshire, Yorkshire, Staffordshire.

Leslie was born in Oak Park, Illinois. She spent her childhood years living and playing on the Gulf Coast in Pass Christian, Mississippi. She was nurtured through her adolescent years in Sparks-Glencoe, Maryland.
Moving back to southern climes, she obtained an MFA in Historic Preservation from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia. Leaving the sultry night-breezes of Savannah she came over to York to focus on Archaeology mainly Designed Landscapes. Leslie finished her MA in Historic Archaeology and is currently PhD candidate, both with the University of York.

Caroline Palmer

Contact e-mail: caroline-palmerATtiscali.co.uk

Counties covered: all counties of Wales.

Caroline has lived in Wales for 24 years and been a long-serving member of the Welsh Historic Gardens Trust. She edits their quarterly Bulletin, a newsletter which goes out to their 700 members in Wales and beyond. Active in research in her local branch, in the county of Ceredigion, she recently published (with fellow WHGT members Penny David and Ros Laidlaw) a local book, Historic Parks and Gardens in Ceredigion, which contains a gazetteer of all the once-important parks or gardens in the county and gives a detailed description of 31 of the best and most interesting. She is thus no stranger to the recording of gardens, both through archive research and on-the-ground exploration.

Patricia Shepherd

Contact e-mail: pmshepherdATaol.com

Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hereford & Worcester, Kent, Leicestershire & Rutland, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Sussex.

Patricia has been involved in gardens and landscape for nearly twenty five years; the practice’s work covers the combined professions of architecture and garden design - projects include the conservation and restoration of historic buildings and their associated gardens as well as involvement in new landscape work. She studied Garden Design at the Chelsea Physic Garden and Writtle College, moving into conservation based work after taking the post graduate Diploma in Conservation and Restoration of Parks and Gardens at the Architectural Association. A further period working at English Heritage on the Register provided an ideal continuation of the subject.
Patricia has been teaching the principles of garden design and conservation for eight years to interested students both abroad and in East Anglia.

The Welsh Historic Gardens Trust

Photograph of the Gardens at Clytha Park, Monmouthshire, a private Grade II listed garden. Reproduced by kind permission of Caroline Palmer.

The WHGT was founded in 1989, at a time when very little public attention was directed at our heritage of historic gardens, this indeed was just three years after the publication of the Oxford Companion to Gardens, by Patrick Goode which rather rashly asserted that there were hardly any historic gardens of note across the border! That misapprehension has certainly been substantially challenged since then.

Three survey initiatives followed in the succeeding years: the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens published six volumes, describing a total of 367 gardens, the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Wales developed a gardens database, and the ten county branches of the WHGT developed, in consultation with RCAHMW their own regional databases. Some of the material collected has also been deposited with the RCAHMW and in some counties a quantity of core data about gardens has been lodged with the county Sites and Monuments Record. The SMR makes the information readily available to planning departments and may therefore contribute to the safeguarding of sites threatened by development. At the present time, the survey material created by WHGT recorders is both dispersed and incomplete, very understandably in view of the huge size of the undertaking.

Unlike the Cadw register, which confined itself to gardens deemed of national importance, and allocated them to a classification of Grade I, II* and II similar in convention to that for listed buildings, the County Recorders began their task from the other end of the range. Most began by examining old ordnance survey maps, tithe maps, and historic tours and descriptions to identify every site where a garden of at least modest significance can be shown to have existed. Some would prove to be entirely lost, ploughed out or built over, others were still apparent to the trained eye through surviving trees or built structures but largely lost to general recognition. In my own county, Ceredigion, (or Cardiganshire as it used to be known), which is generally held to be the most impoverished of Welsh counties, some 244 sites were recognized through this first stage research, in wealthier areas like Gwynedd more than 500 were identified. Not surprisingly, few counties have yet completed the task of visiting every site located by the archive research, though probably most of the more conspicuous gardens have been visited at least once and branch recorders hold a large amount of information not welded into a consistent format.

In addition to recording gardens, the WHGT also initiated a number of ambitious projects which soon budded off as separate Trusts. Almost everyone is familiar with the TV series on the restoration of Aberglasney – ‘A Garden Lost in Time’, and many have now visited its exquisite restoration and new ornamental gardens. Another Trust secured the National Botanic Garden of Wales on the site of Middleton Hall, where William Paxton’s chain of lakes and cascades, and the derelict but distinctive double walled garden could be integrated into the new developments. More historically conservative in its approach was the Hafod Trust, whose task was to form co-operative alliances with the Forestry Commission and reclaim from the ravages of commercial forestry the Grade I listed picturesque landscape laid out in the late 18th century by aesthete, Thomas Johnes of Hafod. Another initiative, The Gateway Project, facilitated garden visits for disadvantaged groups and minorities who might otherwise not be aware of their garden heritage. This too budded off its parent as The Gateway Trust and has now expanded its geographic range over the border into England.

The core objectives of the WHGT must be the recording, conserving and restoration of historic gardens, and the work continues. A number of very high profile planning battles have ensued where the setting of nationally important sites including Powis Castle, Ruperra Castle, and the Vaynol near Bangor have been under threat. Local branch conservation officers are also vigilant in scanning planning applications and ensuring that the planners are not left unaware of the importance of the lesser sites not listed on the Cadw Register.

The WHGT also exists to support and encourage owners of historic gardens, and arranges a programme of national and local visits and study days, often at choice locations not normally accessible to the public.

Caroline Palmer
Volunteer Coordinator, Parks & Gardens UK

The IT Project and Data Recording

Work is now about to get underway on developing the new Parks & Gardens Database and Website. We have appointed as IT contractors ALTCOM Ltd, who are based in Penzance and have done some very interesting work including developing the new website for the Jurassic Coast – www.jurassiccoast.com. We are all looking forward to working with them in developing the Parks & Gardens Database and Website.

The IT Project will run for about six months, starting this November. We will have the website up and running in the spring of next year, although it will still take another year at least before all the data is entered and made available. We will be starting with what data we already have, and will be adding data from many of the County Gardens Trusts.

The database will have two levels of record for Parks and Gardens; Basic and Detailed. As you might expect, the Basic records will have the name of the site, its location and some brief details about it. We will be including some key information about context, style, buildings etc, but no really detailed description. The Detailed records will contain more text, describing the site and its history, and include details of the planting (both current and historical), together with images.

We will also have a section of the database for people associated with Parks and Gardens, such as Lancelot (Capability) Brown, Gertrude Jekyll and many others.

From the website you will be able to search through the database to pick out the places in which you are interested. This could be by looking up the name of the site, looking at sites within a county, searching the database for sites with particular features, or sites associated with a specific person. The information on the site you select will then come up on the website, together with a map of where the site is and any images which we have of the site .

There will be a data entry facility which will allow our Volunteers to enter data through the website and put it into a secure place on the database, for checking (I almost said our database, but of course it isn’t – it will be YOUR database). Over the next few months we will be sending out information on what data we would like you to record, explanatory notes on data recording and notes on how to enter the data through the website. We hope that many of you will join our team of Volunteers to go out, record parks and gardens and put the information into the database.

John Warden
Data Manager, Parks & Gardens UK

Events

December 2006

What: 'Historic Parks and Modern Management.'
Where: Liverpool University, Department of History.
When: From late afternoon on Friday, 15 December 2006, and through Saturday 16 December 2006.
Cost: There is no fee for the event.
Contact: Katy Jones on 0151 794 2440 or k.jones2ATliverpool.ac.uk

March 2007

What: Association of Gardens Trusts Research Lectures: Jenifer Meir: 'Sanderson Miller and his Landscapes' and Michael Symes: 'The Picturesque and the Sublime.'
Where: at Swedenborg Hall, Holborn, London.
When: Thursday, 22 March 2007 , at 2.00pm.
Contact: Kate Harwood: agtATgardens-trusts.org.uk

May 2007

What: Study Day, Leicestershire & Rutland Gardens Trust: 'Rufford Revealed: The History of the Gardens from Cistercian utility to Edwardian Opulence.'
Where: Rufford Abbey.
When: Tuesday 15 May 2007.
Cost about £30.
Contact: Lucy Alcock, Rufford Country Park, Ollerton, Newark, Nottinghamshire NG22 9DF Tel: 01623 821313. E-mail: lucy.alcockATnottscc.gov.uk

June 2007

What: Association of Gardens Trusts/Buckinghamshire Gardens Trust Study Day
Where: Buckinghamshire - maybe at Hartwell
When: June (date and time to be arranged).
Contact: Kate Harwood: agtATgardens-trusts.org.uk

If you have an event which you would like us to include in future editions of
Parks & Gardens News, or if you would like any further information, do please contact:
Helen Lazenby on 01904 433950 or
e-mail: hl523ATyork.ac.uk