The Art of Gardening 
do not know that a large portion of Central 
Park was created by Mr. Olmsted and his 
associates, in almost as literal a sense as any 
painter ever created a pictured landscape; 
who do not remember the dismal, barren, 
treeless, half-rocky, and half-swampy waste 
which, less than forty years ago, occupied all 
the tracts below the reservoir ; who fancy 
that Nature made them beautiful with mead- 
ows, ponds, trees, and shrubs, with wood- 
land passages, and verdurous cliffs and hol- 
lows ; who think that all man has done has 
been to lay out the roads and paths, and 
build the terraces, bridges, and shelters. If 
they will read any contemporary description 
of the quondam aspect of these tracts, now 
so natural-looking in their beauty, and will 
then study the Park to-day and consider 
what difficulties must have attended the 
process which made it lovely to the eyes and 
convenient for the feet and wheels of crowd- 
ing thousands, they may gain some idea of 
what landscape-gardening means ; they may 
understand why we who have studied it even 
from the outside rank it quite as high as any 
other art. 
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