Designed Landscapes of the Recent Past

From 13 April to 31 May 2021, Historic Environment Scotland (HES) sought views on Scotland’s modern garden and designed landscape heritage. We asked for nominations of sites to include in our new programme of work, ‘Designed Landscapes of the Recent Past’.  

Background 

We think gardens and designed landscapes dating from 1945 to the early 2000s are currently underrepresented in our publicly available records. These include the online database for the National Record of the Historic Environment (Canmore) and the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes. 

This programme will champion Scotland’s modern garden and designed landscape heritage through recording sites, improving online records and considering the most important sites for designation.  

We aim to develop our understanding of modern gardens and designed landscapes – including their survival and significance – and to promote knowledge about this important part of our historic environment.  

We had 30 responses to the survey. Most were from private individuals, but we also received responses on behalf of organisations, public bodies or charities and from private businesses. 

All respondents agreed that gardens and designed landscapes of the recent past were part of Scotland’s historic environment and that they should be protected in the same way as older sites. Most respondents considered that modern designed landscapes were not adequately represented in our online records and were sometimes under threat.  

Comments noted that sites of this period were not always valued as much as buildings or natural landscapes and could be vulnerable to loss, alteration or problems with maintenance.  

Other comments noted that these sites were part of Scotland’s story and that recording them and telling their history was important for future generations. Several respondents told us that we should consider landscape broadly, and to include sites related to housing, industry and infrastructure in our programme. 

Respondents were able to nominate up to 3 sites for us to consider as part of the programme. 

We received a total of 47 nominations. Once repeat nominations are subtracted, this gives us a total of 42 different sites from a total of 15 local authority areas across Scotland. The local authority areas with the largest numbers of nominations were Glasgow City Council and Edinburgh City Council. 

Since the close of the online survey on 31st May, we have begun research on the nominated sites. We will consider these sites alongside those brought to our attention through internal conversations in HES, a stakeholder webinar in April 2021, and through the ScoMo project (https://scomolandscape.wordpress.com/portfolio/).  

After reading the comments and nominations from the survey, we have decided to publish a more detailed report on the results of the survey (Update - 07 October 2021 - This has now been published with a link to the document below).

Next steps 

• Select a small number of nominated sites for recording in 2021-2022 

• Plan a sequence of phases of work from 2022 onwards 

• Publish more information about this project on our website www.historicenvironment.scot/gardens-and-designed-landscapes 

We would welcome any further feedback or nominations that you might have. 

You can contact the project team on modernlandscapes@hes.scot.