Church gardens - Latvia

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Name	Church garden
Place	-
Country	Latvia
Author(s)	add your name(s), optional
World Heritage	if applicable,enter the year of listing


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Why is this case relevant?

Church gardens in Latvia are important part of cultural landscape. In Latvia as the whole Baltic Sea region church landscapes has been a meeting place for various cultures – Orthodox from the east, Christianity from the west, and Islam with the Tartars [Ode, Å.,Tveit, M.S., Fry, G. Advantages of using different data sources in assessment of landscape change and its effect on visual scale. Ecological indicators, vol. 10, Elsevier, 2010,p. 24-31.]. Church as a building in many places is architectural monument, with protection status, but not the garden or landscape. The church and the church garden is a complex element in the context of the church landscape. The church garden is not a single unit, because historically it has developed in close connection to the church as the dominant of the landscape. The church garden can been viewed within the specific defined limits, determined by the garden space surrounding the church building, which is an enclosed structure in most cases in Latvia.

Design concept of church gardens can be seen in two scales. One is vertical, as garden has much to do with topography. For the churches historically have been chosen places that can be visible from far distances. Other scale is horizontal, as they have close distances to other buildings, and it is mostly closed garden space, where people tend to make more and more intensively maintained garden space. Nowadays in many church gardens big trees are catted down and replaced by well maintained hedges.

Here you discuss the types of negative impact you are observing but you can also mention new functions that could give a development opportunity

Finally, please share some ideas of how you would initiate positive change for your heritage area