i26 Frederick Law Olmsted 



Landscape gardening in the United States 1 has hitherto 

 been chiefly directed to the improvement of naturally wooded 

 scenery, and that on a small scale, yet in many instances, of 

 which the best are on the banks of the Hudson, with admir- 

 able results. Publicly the art has been chiefly directed, also, 

 to the improvement of naturally wooded picturesque scenery 

 in the formation of rural cemeteries. 



Turning from an analysis of the actual condition of the 

 landscape art, Mr. Olmsted mentions certain sources of 

 inspiration : 



In the various Picturesque Tours of Gilpin, and the 

 voluminous Essays on the Picturesque by Sir Uvedale Price, 

 the true principles of art applicable to the creation of scenery 

 were laboriously studied and carefully defined. Shenstone, 

 Mason and Knight, by their poems, materially aided the 

 revivification of the art. In more recent times the good 

 service of Repton, Loudon, Paxton, Kemp, our own Downing, 

 and other artists and writers on the subject during the present 

 century merits warm acknowledgment. Downing 's works 

 especially should be in every village school library. 



A horticultural atmosphere pervaded the landscape work 

 of 1857. Downing's Horticulturist, as its name implies, had 

 up to his death served not only as his own mouthpiece but 

 also a medium of communication for the many cultivated 

 gentlemen who were apt to prefer interesting specimen 

 plants to picturesque compositions. Downing himself ran 

 a nursery and reflected to a less degree the taste of the period 

 for a horticultural style. That conditions in the United 

 States were in general scarcely different thirty years later 

 shows against what odds the new profession had to make 

 headway. Writing in 1888 to one of a board of park com- 

 missioners in Rochester, Mr. Olmsted might almost equally 



1 Mr. Olmsted does not mention the work of M. Andr6 Parmentier, of 

 Brooklyn, whom Downing considered of great importance (see Downing's 

 Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, 1841), and several other earlier 

 amateur and professional landscape gardeners, especially in Virginia and 

 Pennsylvania. 



