C H A P T E R

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Managing Gardens
Dorothy Fox and Jonathan Edwards

Aims
This chapter introduces the range of gardens that are presented to the
public as visitor attractions, the popularity of which continues to
increase. The complexity of managing such outdoor sites, which in the
majority of cases were not initially developed or designed to receive
large numbers of visitors, is discussed. Also discussed are some of the
factors that influence an individual’s decision to visit a garden.
The specific aims of this chapter are to:
● provide an overview of garden-based visitor attractions,
● identify and characterize the visitors to gardens, and
● examine the issues involved in managing sites which are both natural
and social spaces and which were not initially developed as visitor
attractions.

Introduction
While data regarding the popularity of gardens as visitor attractions globally are
not currently available, official figures for the UK (VisitBritain, 2006) suggest
that in the early years of the twenty-first century gardens represent 7 per cent of
the attractions section and account for 5 per cent of all visits. These figures are
almost certainly an underestimate, as they do not recognize the attraction of gar-
dens associated with historic properties, a category of attraction that accounts
for 12 per cent of all visits, and nor do they recognize the visits to the many hun-
dreds of private gardens that open to the public on an occasional basis. One esti-
mate is that between 300 and 400 million visits are made to historic parks and