Search Help

General Web Site Search

'Quick search' (found top left, under the banner, of every main page of this web site) enables you to do a basic search for our database records of historic parks, gardens and designed landscape sites and the people historically associated with them, or to search for other web site content.

To use Quick search:

1) Select whether you want to search for 'Sites and people' or for 'Other web site content.'

2) Type your search word or phrase into the Quick Search box (which is labelled 'Type search text here').

3) Click on the 'Go' button.

Note: The 'Sites and people' option refers to the records on our database which give detailed descriptions of historic parks, gardens and designed landscapes or the people historically associated with them.

The 'Other web site content' consists of news, articles, interviews, educational resources and in-depth profiles of contemporary and historical people.

Further help on Quick Search is available in Quick Search Help, under the Quick Search box. 

The Advanced Search option can be used to make a very detailed search of all records in the database, and there is additional Help on that page.

Map Based Location Search provides an interactive map of the United Kingdom showing the locations of all the Parks and Gardens on our database. NOTE: If you are using a dial-up modem internet connection you may experience some delay when using the map-based search.

Advanced Search

Advanced Search: enables you to focus your search on specific records and terms within our database, for example, to find all records relating to sites within a certain period by a particular designer.

The search form is split into four main sections; What, Where, Who and When.

Use:

• What to search for parks and gardens of a specific type.
• Where to find parks and gardens in a specific area.
• Who to search for people or organisations associated with parks and gardens.
• When to search for parks, gardens, people or references in a specific period or date range.

You can enter terms in one, several or all sections. Any search text boxes with a "Choose" button next to them will auto-complete when you start typing words in them, or will bring up a list of terms from which you can choose.

If you are not sure about what term you want to enter, you can look at and select terms from a list by using "Choose" buttons.

If you click on the "Choose" button, a list of terms will appear. To select a term, click on the green underlined word/s.

Many terms will have a "+" button to the left of them. Click on the "+" button to get a list of narrower terms (it becomes a "-" button which you can click on to close the list of narrower terms).

To select a narrower term, click on the green underlined words.

Any of these types of searches may be combined, for example, you can combine "walled garden" as a type of site with the period term "18th century" to find records of 18th century walled gardens.

You will see several tick-boxes at the foot of the form. Use these to restrict the search to the type of records in which you are interested.

Searching by What:

Parks/gardens sites: we have categorised most of these sites according to one or more of the following:

• Form (or Type);
• Current Use;
• Plant Type/Environment;
• Site context or main building;
• Style

These can be used singly or in combination to narrow down the search for sites with particular characteristics.

Features: we have categorised these under broad types. There are 3 or 4 levels of narrow terms below many of the broad features terms.

Searching by Where:

All search fields in this section, except for "City/town/village" and "Postcode," are local authority areas. We have used the Office of National Statistics official lists of administrative areas in the United Kingdom for these.

Postcode search: note that this will only find sites that have official postcodes since many sites do not have postal deliveries, so do not have postcodes.

Searching by Who:

This section enables you to search for records of people or organisations associated with the historic parks and gardens sites. These may be historical or contemporary.

"Occupation" refers to a person’s occupation that may or may not be related to a park/garden.

"Role of person" refers to the role that a person had relating to a specific site or sites.

"Role of organisation" refers to the role that an organisation has/had relating to a specific site or sites. Organisations include advisory or statutory bodies, special interest groups, as well as owners, builders etc.

Searching by When:

This section enables you to search for different types of records by date, for example, sites or features created in a specific year or period, people alive within a specific period, or reference sources published between specific years.

Either select a term from the list of periods accessed by clicking the "Choose" button;

Or, type in the earliest year (for example, 1800) in the appropriate "Start Date" box, and latest year (for example, 1875) in the appropriate "End Date" box.

How to use the map search

To start your map search for sites either:

• Zoom in on the area you want to see by using the slider scale on the top left of the map (+ to zoom in, - to zoom out) and the four compass arrows to move around the map.
• Once you zoom in close enough you will see a number of leaf icons showing the position of each site.

or

• Select a County or Local Authority from the drop-down list provided. This will bring up a map showing all sites in or around that County.
• You can then zoom in or out, or move around using the compass arrows.

To see the name of a site, just click on the leaf icon.

Click on the site name to bring up the record for that site.

Viewing maps

You can select how you view the map from the buttons in the top right corner of a map. There are three different views:

1. ‘map’ – this is the normal view and shows map information only;
2. 'satellite' – this is the aerial photograph view, or by clicking on the
3. 'hybrid' – this combines the satellite and map views, showing the map image as outlines over the aerial photograph.

The level of detail shown in the satellite images is variable and is beyond our control.

Please note that because of the large amount of information needed for these maps, users with dial-up modem internet connections may experience some delays when using the map-based search.

We are aware that some site locations are only approximate at present. We are working through our records to make these as precise as possible but this will take some time to complete.