The Thomas D. Church collection documents more than eleven hundred of Church’s projects through textual records, drawings and photographs. The collection is arranged in six series: Personal Papers, Office Records, Project Records, Display Boards, Additional Donations, and Art & Artifacts. The Personal Papers include an album documenting Church’s trip to Europe is included in the collection and documents his meeting with Alvar Aalto and a drawing while he was a student. The office records include correspondence relating to prospective (uncompleted) projects, subject files that contain photographs and clippings of landscape details and structures primarily from Church’s book Gardens Are For People; a scrapbook, public relations files, photographs, colleague and vendor card files, and exhibit boards. The public relations files include correspondence regarding the publication of Church’s work, published articles by and about Church, and photographs of Church projects. The photographs consist primarily of completed projects but there are also portraits and photographic studies taken during foreign travel. The exhibit boards feature large mounted photographs, as well as drawings. Additional photographs comprised generally of site and preconstruction images are located with the project files. The oversized scrapbook contains tearsheets of publications of his work. Also included in the office records are photographs and correspondence files created by photographer Carolyn Caddes. The Caddes photographs include portraits of Church, photographs of his office, and some images of his completed projects. Additional photographers represented in the collection include Maynard L. Parker and Rondal Partridge.

The bulk of the collection is comprised of project records. Arranged alphabetically, they consist of correspondence, plant lists, reports, clippings, photographs and drawings. Many project files include pre-construction site photographs. Although the bulk of the records are for residential projects, records of Church’s major non-residential projects form a large part of the series, including the General Motors Technical Center (Warren, Michigan, 1956), numerous sites for the Caterpillar Company (Illinois, 1958-62), Longwood Gardens (Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, 1971-75), Stanford University (Palo Alto, 1949-76), and University of California, Santa Cruz (1962-75). The Dewey Donnell garden, his most acclaimed project, is well documented. There are a number of Church project files in the H. Leland and Adele Vaughan Collection possibly because Church worked in their office when he first returned to California.

The third series consists of multimedia display boards from the retail store Cargoes, illustrating projects Church collaborated on with William Wurster and Gardner Dailey. The bulk of the collection was transferred from Church’s office in 1997, and their original order has been maintained. Blueprints and photographs donated separately are included in the final series.

The Additional Donations consist of project records donated by individuals and records related to the publication of the second and third editions of Gardens Are For People. Church’s drafting table, boots, iconic briefcases, and pencil box are contained in the Art & Artifacts series.