On a visit to the nearbyPatuxent Wildlife Research Refuge , I stopped to read the signage about America ’s “ Conservation Leaders ” and was surprised to see Frederick Law Olmsted decent there , with Audubon , Thoreau , Jacques Cousteau and Morris Udall . The sign described his work open up Yosemite Valley before it became a commons , and many other parking lot , and noted that his master principles of conception were raw beauty and approachability to all .
Good to know , because while I ’m aware that he made his mark designing parks , I remember whatMichael Pollanhad to say about him back in ’ 89 .
America has made fundamentally one important donation to world garden design : the custom of “ uniting the front lawns of however many house there may be on both sides of a street to lay out an untroubled aspect of expansive leafy vegetable to the passer - by . ” France has its stately , geometric garden , England its picturesque park , and America this boundless democratic river of manicure lawn along which we array our houses .
IF ANY INDIVIDUAL CAN BE said to have invented the American lawn , it is Frederick Law Olmsted . In 1868 , he received a commission to design Riverside , outside of Chicago , one of the first planned suburban residential district in America . Olmsted ’s intent stipulated that each house be set back 30 feet from the route and it proscribed paries . He was reacting against the “ high beat - walls ” of England which he felt made a wrangle of home there seem “ as of a serial of individual madhouses . ” In Riverside , each owner would keep one or two trees and a lawn that would run seamlessly into his neighbors ’ , creating the picture that all lived together in a unmarried park .
But in England , lawns were unremarkably found only on estates ; the Americans democratise them , cutting the vast manorial greenswards into quarter - acre slices everyone could afford . Also , the English never considered the lawn an end in itself : it served as a stage setting for lawn games and as a background for bed of flowers and trees .
It ’s when it come to residential landscapes that I take issue with old Frederick , and I think of him whenever I see acres of turf where it does n’t belong to – in unused , resource - intensive front yards . Great lawn like the one above in Central Parkbelongin green , where they ’re want for play . In front yards they service what purpose exactly ?
Olmsted was the depicted object of a late clause in Landscape Architecture Magazine with the provocative title“Frederick Law Olmsted is Holding Us Back . ( There . I Said It . ) ” so I was eager to see what pearl the generator had to pick with Olmsted . overexploitation of lawns , proper ?
Hardly . His complaint is that Olmsted is the only landscape architect fuck to the public and is mention far too often , even in professional diary .
So given that we do n’t have anyone else with Olmsted ’s kind of public brand identity to throw out there the way architects name - drop Frank Lloyd Wright , Le Corbusier , Philip Johnson , and others , we make every effort to keep Olmsted in the conversation . The veneration seems to be that if people stop speak about him , they turn back talking about landscape architecture . I hate to say it , but there is some truth in that paranoia .
The author goes on to lament that even the much - praisedHigh stemma , a chef-d’oeuvre of the profession , has n’t got hoi polloi talking about landscape painting architecture , that incredibly , thearchitectfor that project is getting all the tending .
The only mention of Pollan ’s outlet with Olmsted is this :
By linking our image so closely to the antiquated bequest of a man best recognise for make pastoral 19th - century landscapes , we look rather irrelevant in that respect .
on the dot ! Because we ’re SO over the pastoral thing , which only made common sense with the supporter of grazing brute .
