From preservation to restoration: policies and methods applied to historic gardens

Abstract

This article discusses the issue of treatment of the historic garden in the international and national heritage scenario, both in its heritage policies as well as in its methodologies for restoration/intervention. With the objective of presenting an overview of how the garden issue has been approached in the heritage area and pointing out updated questions, at first, it focuses on heritage policies, showing the transformations in the concept of historic garden, initially linked to the notion of monument and now currently converging to the concept of cultural landscape. It also discusses the classification system of the garden drawn up at the National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage (Iphan), concerning its listing as well as the instruments of protection. Finally, it analyzes the specific restoration methods for gardens, drawing attention to their specificities through a comparative study of two specific methodologies, an international methodology, published by the International Committee for Historic Gardens (ICOMOS-IFLA) authored by Carmen Añón (1989) and the other, a national one, by Carlos Delphim (2005), adopted by Iphan.