ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS 



erations of the Justifying Value of a Pub- 

 lic Park." With these various works in 

 hand we may be justified in a few generali- 

 zations regarding his methods and their 

 results. 



1. He revitalized the natural style. 

 Brown, Repton, Downing and all their 

 followers had professed the natural style, 

 but the works of Olmsted were so much 

 more truly like the best of Nature's work, 

 that the whole doctrine of naturalness in 

 landscape art received a new meaning at 

 his hands. To-day, at least in America, 

 the natural style and the Olmstedian style 

 are synonymous, while the v/orks of all 

 his predecessors would be rated artificial. 



2. Olmsted introduced a new apprecia^ 

 tion of natural scenery. Other men had 

 been gardeners or improvers on Nature. 

 He first taught us to admire Nature in 

 her own dress. Downing was, of course, a 

 lover of natural landscape, but this element 

 of his character was not brought strongly 

 forward in his landscape gardening. 



3. Adaptation to site and surroundings 

 was the keynote of Olmsted's work, and 

 this also amounted to a new discovery in 

 landscape art. In this direction Olmsted 



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