How we research sites for the Inventory

The site survey and documentary research are limited in time and scope by the resources available but we are constantly building up more information on Inventory sites through more in-depth researches done by other professionals or interested parties such as the Garden History Society, local history groups, or individuals. Information supplied by site owners, their factors and staff has proven invaluable.

Site reports

To ensure all the site reports are consistent, they are formatted in the same way and the information on each garden and landscape is broken down into components. These components are distinct, identifiable parts, traceable to different stage in history. They include:

• Parkland, including parkland trees and avenues
• Coniferous woodlands, mainly commercial
• Deciduous woodlands, mainly amenity, and shelterbelts
• Wild and woodland gardens, including shrubberies
• Architectural features including the main house, lodges, farm buildings, follies, ornaments and other built structures
• Woodland walks, laid out rides and walks through policy woodland and shrubberies
• Arboreta
• Plant collections, excluding arboreta
• Water gardens, incorporating falls, cascades and streams, with water margin plants
• Water features such as lochs and ponds designed as features in the landscape
• Formal gardens, including terraced, enclosed, parterres, topiary
• Walled (excluding formal), kitchen and vegetable gardens
• Specialised gardens, for example Japanese gardens
  
  

Many designed landscapes are closely bound up with their surroundings in one way or another.

Defining the extent and mapping the boundary of a site

Defining the extent and mapping the boundary of a site involves three main steps:

1. an assessment of the area which is essential to the setting of the main house or group of main buildings.
   
   
2. an assessment from documentary evidence and evidence on the ground collected during the site survey, of the area of land which has actually been designed at some point in time and which still shows evidence of this design today.
   
   
3. an assessment of the surrounding landscape which is integral to the designed landscape, either as ‘borrowed’ landscape such as a hill or view of an offshore island, or simply as setting for the design.