A gardener's experience of document work at a historic landscape site

Abstract

Research in document work has tended to take a sociocultural perspective. Recent interest in document experience invites the consideration of document work from the perspective of an individual's lived experience. This paper reports on a holistic, single-case study of how the head gardener at Shofuso Japanese House and Garden, a historic landscape site in Philadelphia, experiences the document work involved in developing a comprehensive garden plan. A hermeneutic analysis of the data reveals how the underlying foundational values of authenticity, education and reducing ambiguity support the process of document work in this case, which involves summoning diverse knowledge, channeling the master and stepping back. This process is punctuated by organizational and historical challenges. These findings suggest that the theoretical framework of foundation-process-challenges may be used to study the lived experience of document work in other cases. Further ramifications are discussed for practice in gardening and historical document work.