Down the Garden Path: A Guide to Researching the History of a Garden or Landscape

By Edwinna von Baeyer

I have just published a revised version of my Down the Garden Path: A Guide to Researching the History of a Garden or Landscape. The manual is designed to help you document a landscape. Documentation is the first step to preserve, conserve or restore a landscape – whether it is a private garden, city park, industrial complex, cemetery, historic house and grounds, etc. The guide contains descriptions of the major useful sources (such as maps, photographs, diaries, etc.); how to do library, archival and web research; how to do oral history interviews; and includes samples of the forms most often used when compiling a history of a site.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edwinna von Baeyer
• Release date: Jun 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9780969210016

Book preview

Down the Garden Path: A Guide to Researching the History of a Garden or Landscape

Edwinna von Baeyer

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Copyright

Published by EvB Communications

Copyright: Edwinna von Baeyer, 2007, revised 2019

Smashwords Edition

ISBN: 978-0-9692100-1-6

Smashwords Edition, License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover photo credit: Mapperton House and Gardens, Dorset, England. Photo by author.

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Dedication

To Cornelius who has always believed in me.

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Acknowledgements

This guide has been a lot of fun to work on. It is a culmination of 30-plus years of poking around dusty archives finding those wonderful bits of information that slowly added up to form a history of yet another landscape or garden.

Over the years, I’ve received help from a legion of archivists and research librarians and my fellow landscape historians. They are all wonderful people – the mainstay of heritage preservation – I salute you all!

However, there is one person to whom I owe so much – Susan Buggey. As I’ve said in other places and other times, she was instrumental in putting me firmly on the garden path. Over the years, her wise counsel, expansive knowledge of landscape history, policy and research techniques have helped me immensely. She was a valued friend.

And, of course, I must acknowledge my husband, Cornelius. His gentle urgings to stop writing and editing for others and to start writing my own publications again put me once more in the thick of landscape history.

I have had others read this document; however, any mistakes are mine and mine only.

Edwinna von Baeyer

Ottawa, September 2007, 2019

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 - Introduction of Source Materials

Chapter 2 - Major Groups of Source Materials

Chapter 3 - Library Research

Chapter 4 - Archival Research

Chapter 5 - Web Research

Chapter 6 - Oral History - Interviewing

Chapter 7 - Importance of Citations

Chapter 8 – Site Inventory

Chapter 9 - When to Bring in Professionals

Chapter 10 - Know When to Fold ‘Em

Chapter 11 - Before You Write, Some Considerations

Appendix A - Pulling it all Together - The Case of Maplelawn, 1817-1994: A Landscape History

Appendix B - Selected Landscape History Search Terms

Appendix C - List of Major Landscape Design Styles

Appendix D - Selected Bibliography for Garden and Landscape History

Appendix E - Source Description Report - Sample Form

Appendix F - Interview Release Form Sample

Appendix G - Interview Information Form Sample

Appendix H - Interview Abstract Summary Sample

Appendix I - Transcribed Recorded Interview Sample

Appendix J - Site Inventory Sample

Endnotes

About the Author

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Photo credit: Hestercombe Gardens, Somerset; photo by author.

Introduction

There are many reasons for wanting to document a landscape – as many, perhaps, as there are types of landscapes. Landscapes give us a sense of place. Landscapes are part of our history. No matter where you live – urban or rural, city core or suburbs – you are connected to the landscape around you. The connection of people to place is part of what defines who we are, where we came from, and where we might be headed.

Using this guide will help you document a landscape. Documentation is the first step to preserve, conserve or restore a landscape – whether it is a private garden, city park, industrial complex, cemetery, historic house and grounds, etc.

Who will benefit from using this guide?

* Individuals who want to write the history of a personal landscape or garden.

* Members of civic groups, societies, governments, etc. who want to document the story of a significant landscape in their locality, whether small or large.

Please note: In this guide, the term landscape is used in its broadest sense to encompass all types of sites from a home garden, to the grounds surrounding a factory, to a park and to Aboriginal hunting grounds – and everything in between.

You might have personal reasons for wanting to document a landscape. You might want to recreate your grandmother’s garden. Or it might be a professional or civic reason – you are a member of an organization that is working to preserve or recreate a public landscape such as a town park, a churchyard garden, the garden around a historic home... Perhaps a site is threatened with demolition and you need to prove its historical importance in order to help save and protect it. The more solid information you can present obviously the better.

However, whether you are focusing on a small backyard garden of the 1890s or a city park system designed in the 1930s, it is important to realize that all landscapes, which are composed of living things, are dynamic, constantly evolving. What you see today may or may not accurately reflect what was there in the past. Charting that evolution – from what occupied the site before the landscape was created to what is there today – is what comprises the history of a landscape. This history should integrate all elements (architectural, landscape, plantings, etc.) into a complete as possible story. You will be documenting basically what is an interconnected system of soil, water, climate, plants and animals.

To compile a solid history of your site, it is important to go after three types of information:

1. the context or background history within which the site developed;

2. the facts, illustrations, plans, etc. connected to the site; and

3. an inventory of plant material, layout and structures that are currently on the site.

Types of historic landscapes

- Aboriginal landscapes

- Battlefields

- Beaches and coastal areas

- Botanical gardens

- Campsites

- Canal lockmaster’s gardens

- Cemeteries

- Ceremonial sites

- Church grounds

- College and university campuses

- Country estates

- Ethnic neighbourhoods

- Experimental farms

- Fairgrounds, amusement parks…

-Farms and ranches

- Fort garden

- Home gardens

- Industrial parks/complexes such as railway yards, factory complexes, mines, flour mills, logging camps, shipbuilding yards, etc.

- Institutional grounds such as around hospitals, military complexes, jails, municipal buildings, monasteries

- Mission gardens

- Orchards

- Parkways; scenic highways

- Pioneer gardens

- Planned communities, such as garden suburbs

- Plantation gardens

- Public and private parks

- Railway gardens

- Religious institution grounds, such as a monastery

- Rural landscapes; rural districts

- School gardens

- Sites used for religious or cultural activities such as camp meeting grounds

- Trading post gardens

Just as you cannot study a person’s life without also studying his or her family, friends, co-workers, so too are landscapes studied in a broad context. Over the last decade, historic landscape conservation and protection has shifted from a spotlight on conserving the grounds around individual historic buildings to an expanded landscape. Landscapes in this wider context are usually called cultural landscapes. A cultural landscape, as defined by Parks Canada, includes any geographical area that has been modified or influenced by human activity. Thus, for example, Aboriginal hunting grounds, villages and the fields they are connected to, industrial complexes, urban subdivisions, among others are now being studied as cultural landscapes.

A very useful source on protecting cultural landscape, written by Charles A. Birnbaum of the U.S. National Park Service (Protecting Cultural Landscapes: Planning, Treatment and Management of Historic Landscapes) can also help you better understand what a cultural landscape is and how to document one.

Some specialized knowledge necessary

Photo credit: Canadian pioneer garden, n.d., Library and Archives Canada, C40792; author’s collection.

Each site has its questions; its mysteries to solve. To form the right questions and to solve those mysteries, you will need to have some knowledge about gardens and landscapes. This guide presupposes this knowledge – that you know a perennial from an annual; a pergola from a gazebo; a park from a cemetery landscape. You might also need to read up on architectural styles so that you can accurately describe the buildings on a site.

If your knowledge in these areas is scanty, give yourself a crash course. You should have some knowledge of common landscape, garden and horticultural terms and concepts (see Appendix B, page 80, for a list of important search terms; and see Appendix C, for a list of major landscape styles). Giving yourself this crash course will help you knowledgeably read and view the materials you find during your research (see Appendix D, for some useful sources). You can also use the Internet to find horticultural and landscape information.

Also, read up on the history of your site’s locality, so you can relate the facts about your site to what was going on in the wider society. As well, to see how other authors treat a landscape history, read one – for example, John Stilgoe’s book Common Landscapes of America, 1580 to 1845. As well,