At last, landscapes, parks and gardens have been included in their own right on the annual At Risk Register issued by English Heritage. In the past, the Register was just for endangered buildings; for gardens, only archietctural elements - bridges, grottoes, fountains etc - were considered important enough for the general public to be alerted if their condition deteriorated. It is obviously a positive move for parks and gardens to be considered as seriously as buildings - but look at what is on the 2009 list!
There are 96 parks and gardens - yes, 96 in England alone. World-famous Highgate Cemetery is on the list; Paxton's Crystal Palace Park is there, as is Castle Howard, one of England's most important 18th-century landscapes, and the rare Pulhamite garden at Bawdsey Hall, in Suffolk.
Many of these places are the work of luminaries of English landscape design: Crewe Hall in Cheshire, for instance, where 'Capability' Brown, William Eames, Humphry Repton and WA Nesfield were all involved at different times; New Hall and Boreham Wood, two adjacent landscapes by Richard Woods in Essex, and Hatherop, in Gloucestershire, also by Woods; Grovelands Park in north London, which is by Repton and Mawson; Brocklesby Park in Lincolnshire, with work by Brown, Repton and Reginald Blomfield; Charles Barry's Shrubland Hall in Suffolk; and Sylvia Crowe's garden around the Commonwealth Institute in London, which the HGF has long campaigned for.

To add to this national disgrace, some of the threatened sites are government-owned: 17th-century Bramshill Park in Hampshire, for instance, used since 1960 as the Police Staff College (see Historic Gardens Review 2) and Halton House, a former Rothschild house now in the hands of the Royal Air Force.
In some ways the most scandalous of all is Gunnersbury Park in west London (see Historic Gardens Review 8), where huge sums of Lottery and other money have been spent on restoration. Its landscape continues to be in poor condition and nine buildings are at risk, including some once restored.
The problems cited are depressingly repetitive, usually stemming from poor management and maintenance. Some sites are being deliberately run down by developers; but in general the problem seems to be that owners, whether local authorities, commercial enterprises or official bodies, all seem to feel that there are more important claims on their pockets than these icons of England's cultural heritage.
But economic arguments work the other way, too: parks and gardens provide employment and bring money from tourists. Is it not time that owners (including UK government departments) faced up to the obligations implicit in owning a listed property and showed themselves willing to invest in maintaining them? And perhaps English Heritage could exercise a bit more of its muscle? 'Naming and Shaming' should be only the first step.

Gillian Mawrey (December 2009)