Conservation management plans are a valuable tool for helping us to understand the surviving elements and significance of a historic building, garden, landscape, collection or artefact. Through a process of survey and analysis, the Plan defines a management strategy for future care, presentation and opportunities for change. It enables owners to move forward into the 21st century, secure in the knowledge that what matters about their property is properly understood and how change can be accommodated.
Selected Projects
Hidcote Manor Garden, Gloucestershire
Hidcote Manor Garden, although often described as an Arts and Crafts garden, is not purely English in its inspiration. Its creator, Lawrence Johnston, melded English and European design styles with an unfailing eye for perfectly balanced visual relationships. Equally at home with creating the ‘architectural’ structure of the garden as with its planting, Johnston designed in a manner that was entirely new to English gardens of the time.
The challenge for the National Trust today is not only to conserve the structure of Hidcote’s garden, but also to capture the essence of Johnston’s innovative planting style, while also responding to the emerging challenges posed by climate change.
Client: National Trust
Cotehele, Cornwall
Regarded as the best preserved late medieval building in Cornwall, Cotehele House sits within a walled garden and remnants of its Tudor deer park. Its wider estate is rich in ancient woodland, medieval field systems and a network of lanes, tracks and settlements also of medieval origin.
The 18th and early 19th centuries brought further development of farms, villages, quayside lime kilns and buildings, industrial mills and mines. Cotehele lies within the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site. Market gardening was another important and thriving industry on the estate’s sunny hillsides overlooking the River Tamar from the 18th to mid-20th centuries.
Client: National Trust
Stourhead Garden, Wiltshire
The National Trust’s first ever Conservation Plan was written in 1978 for the internationally important landscape garden at Stourhead. The Plan provided a robust strategy for conserving the garden, balancing this with the need to manage growing visitor numbers. It has guided the care of the garden for nearly 5 decades, bringing it to a high point in its mature beauty.
The garden now faces new challenges that were never envisaged in 1978. The combined effects of climate change and globalisation, putting established trees and shrubs at risk and heightening the danger of exposure to virulent new pests and diseases. A new version of the Conservation Plan was prepared in 2024 which now focuses on meeting the particular challenges of the coming years and decades, with the aim of ensuring that Stourhead remains as just as remarkable in 100 years’ time.
Client: National Trust
Judith Teasdale 