The existing eleven partners, covering five counties in three countries, bring together some of the finest examples of garden art and garden heritage in North-West Europe. The partners and their existing networks also have substantial expertise in maintaining, managing, developing and promoting parks and gardens and share best practice in using these assets to benefit social, cultural, economic and environmental wellbeing of their respective regions.

The partnership is also aware of many other organisations caring for parks and gardens, realising interesting projects or developing innovative ideas they would like to see more widely implemented. The partners started the European Garden Heritage Network as an initiative to improve the communication, exchange of ideas and cooperation between these organisations and to this end it has determined that:

• Most of the EGHN workshops have been open and will be open to others.
• Most of the findings and reports made during the implementation of the actions of EGHN are available on this website or on request.
• Measures, activities and recommendations to be tested as part of the INTERREG project will result in models that can easily be used by other organisations and can be transferred to other sites or regions.
• Input given by “external experts” is most welcome and will help to improve the quality and transferability of such measures and models.

The European Garden Heritage Network is open for others to join and was started as an initiative to have a life and follow-up activities when the current funding period has expired. From the very beginning the partnership agreed to invite interested organisations to participate in the EGHN through obtaining “observer” status.

Observers will have privileged access to information, will be invited to participate in workshops and surveys and will be offered the opportunity to nominate parks and gardens to be included within the Transnational Themes in order to give a full picture of the European garden heritage - past, present and future. While there is no funding available for observers and no option to become a full partner during the INTERREG funded project, the EGHN budget allows for some joint activities, in particular the inclusion of 20 parks and gardens nominated by observers in the Transnational Themes and their presentation (in French, English and German) on the website which will be available by summer 2005.

If you are interested in joining EGHN as an observer, contributing to certain activities and events, making any comments or asking any questions please contact the Lead Partner:

Project Coordinator: Christian Gruessen
gruessen@planplus.net

Financial Manager: Jens Spanjer
j.spanjer@stiftung-schloss-dyck.de