ON AMERICAN GARDENING 



Breadth and dignity came with 

 Frederick Law Olmsted. This man was 

 another genius, and he fortunately lived 

 long enough to give the world what was in 

 him. Olmsted was in every way the proper 

 and timely successor of Downing. He 

 took the ideas of Downing, developed and 

 perfected them, and added to them impor- 

 tant contributions of his own. The love of 

 native landscape was again emphasized; 

 but though this was, perhaps, the great con- 

 trolling principle of all Olmsted's work, 

 it was not his discovery. Downing's idea 

 of adapting the scheme of landscape gar- 

 dening to the natural surroundings was so 

 much developed, extended and emphasized 

 by Olmsted that it may fairly be said that 

 it gained a new meaning in his hands. The 

 truly masterly manner in which this one 

 thing was accomplished, — ^the adaptation 

 of the improvement scheme to the character 

 of the tract in hand, — was the most chzu-ac- 

 teristic quality of Olmsted's work, and 

 the one in which his genius soared to its 

 loftiest flights. Striking examples may be 

 cited in Mount Royal Park, Montreal, and 

 the World's Fair Grounds, Chicago. 



Olmsted also discovered the American 



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