DEMOCRATIZING NATURE & THE LEGACY OF FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED

by Dawn Borgeest, Rochester Garden Club, Zone III

entral Park. Yosemite National Park. The U.S. Capitol grounds. Most people—particularly Garden Club of America club members— know that these are examples of the work of the father of landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmsted. And while the contributions Olmsted made through his landscapes are remarkable, his influence in shaping our country at a crucial point in history is equally noteworthy, as was his intuitive sense of the critical role nature plays in our lives.

“Frederick Law Olmsted was ahead of his time in understanding the therapeutic power of nature,” says Dede Petri, president and CEO of the National Association for Olmsted Parks and former GCA president (2017-2019). “As America became more and more industrialized, he wanted everyone to have access to nature and the soothing relief that it offered. Nature—and parks in particular—provided a healthy contrast from what [Olmsted] called the ‘bustle and jar of the streets.’ Parks were places where people from all walks of life could come together. By making connections, parks make community possible.”

“Cities were filling in very quickly and commercial interests sought to fill every inch with revenue generating residential dwellings and commercial buildings,” says Justin Martin, author of Genius of Place: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted (Da Capo Press, 2011), in a recent interview. “Many people lived in very dense, cramped apartments, some in squalor. It’s a fortunate circumstance that Frederick Law Olmsted was working in the 19th century. Had he not, cities would likely look very different. Land that is now parks would have been lost forever. His abiding belief was that nature didn’t belong to anybody—it belonged to everybody.”

The hallmark of Olmsted’s work reflected

Aerial view of Central Park, Olmsted and Vaux’s crowning achievement. Imagine New York City—and the souls and psyches of its residents and visitors— without it. Photo by Leonhard Niederwimmer from Pixabay

his unfailing devotion to retaining or creating nature-inspired elements in his design work. In Riverside, Illinois—a planned community in surburban Chicago—he designed curving roads unlike the more common and formalized grid patterns that typically had been employed in urban centers. In contrast, Olmsted’s design he noted, implied “contemplativeness, and happy tranquility.” While designing the 200-acre grounds of the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane, Olmsted and his partner Calvert Vaux recommended changing the initial siting of the building, and instead positioned it diagonally to the street line, which ensured that a southeastern exposure would provide optimal sunlight for residents. While developing plans for Central Park, Olmsted and Vaux envisioned it as a “rural-style park” designed to fill the soul. Despite fervent objections from several Central Park board members, who felt it should celebrate city life, the park became a beloved respite for New Yorkers. It remains one of the most popular parks in the world and iconic to the very fabric of New York.

“Olmsted had a deep sense of how the natural world could soothe people physiologically—being in nature could have medicinal effects, it could help a person recover from a crisis, and help people be more

The National Association for Olmsted Parks (NAOP) is dedicated to advancing Frederick Law Olmsted’s principles and his legacy of creating parks and landscapes that revitalize communities and enrich lives. Through its Olmsted 200 initiative, NAOP is celebrating the bicentennial of Olmsted’s birth throughout 2022 with conferences, tours, concerts, and competitions that showcase the brilliance of Olmsted’s work and ideas.

NAOP is partnering with the American Society of Landscape Architects, The Garden Club of America, The Cultural Landscape Foundation, the City Parks Alliance, the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, and more than 100 other organizations throughout the country to highlight the work of Olmsted and stimulate a national conversation about his legacy and the need for universal access to parks, recreation, and open space.

Olmsted 200 is bringing together a creative and diverse coalition of landscape architects, city planners, historians, journalists, policy makers, gardeners, public health professionals, and community leaders and advocates to explore the ways in which Olmsted’s values are more important than ever to 21st-century America.

To learn more, visit olmsted200. org. Be sure to sign up for the Olmsted Insider newsletter to receive updates about the campaign. Many events are underway already and many more are added every week.

Olmsted illustration by David Lee Csicsko. Courtesy of NAOP/ Olmsted 200

The RichardsonOlmsted Campus, formerly the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane, one of Olmsted and Vaux’s collaborations. Photo courtesy of the Buffalo Historic Society

Frederick Law Olmsted, 1893. Engraving by T. Johnson from a photograph by James Notland

The Ramble in New York’s Central Park. Olmsted intentionally designed it as a natural forest in which people could get lost. Photo by Ingfbruno from Wikimedia Commons “He was very conscious of the

creative,” observes Olmsted biographer Justin Martin. “He was very conscious of the fact that a natural setting could help people. Olmsted struggled with great personal tragedies and depression that, I believe, gave him an intuitive sense of what people needed.”

And in some cases that included getting lost. One of the most heralded spaces in Central Park is the Ramble. The Central Park Conservancy describes this area as 36 acres “designed to look like the forests of upstate New York.” It includes winding paths and trails, rustic bridges, a meandering stream, dramatic rock outcroppings, and dense plantings. “[Olmsted] loved getting people lost to provide an escape from the discipline of the paved grid of the city,” Martin continues. “And the Ramble is designed for getting lost, prompting you to think about the world in a new way.” Like much of Olmsted’s work, the more natural it looked, the more heavily designed it was.

Olmsted was also a pioneering advocate for preserving natural lands: most notably, his advocacy to preserve Yosemite in California’s Sierra Nevadas, an unheard-of concept at the time. Ironically, Olmsted discovered Yosemite while supervising the Mariposa gold mining operation.

NAOP’s Dede Petri, who is also a member of The Georgetown Garden Club (Zone VI), says that Olmsted’s democratic vision and values are more important today than ever: “Olmsted showed us the power that nature and parks have to unite and strengthen communities, to invigorate public health by restoring our connection to nature, and to contribute to the ecological health of our planet. His thoughtful design and planning of public spaces has had— and will continue to have—powerful social, environmental, economic and health impact.”