One Man's Vision

From Biltmore Estate to the U.S. Capitol Grounds to great parks and neighborhoods, Frederick Law Olmsted's legacy lives on.

The soul of the South lies in its land. From sky-high A forests to parks and gardens flowing like melodies through the dissonance of urban life, the beauty of the earth soothes our eye and slows our pace. It invites us to explore, relax, and breathe in the sights and sounds of nature.

Think about times you've followed the shaded paths of a city park or strolled the grounds of one of the South's best-loved sites. Perhaps, along the way, you wondered who envisioned these places for all to enjoy.

Nature's Artist

One visionary was Frederick Law Olmsted, America's first landscape architect and codesigner of New York City's Central Park. Though Northern born, he sank his creative talent deep into Southern soil.

As a young man, Olmsted tried numerous jobs, from merchant seaman to farmer. He traveled in Europe; wrote books; and studied chemistry, engineering, surveying, and scientific farming. From his father, he learned to appreciate the basic human need for scenic beauty.

During his career as a landscape architect Olmsted designed everything from parks to private gardens. Southern places that bear his mark include Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina; the city park system of Louisville; the U.S. Capitol Grounds in Washington, D.C.; and the Druid Hills neighborhood in Atlanta.

Biltmore Estate, Asheville, North Carolina

Spread across 8,000 acres in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Biltmore Estate reflects one man's wealth and another man's genius. George Washington Vanderbilt was carrying on a family tradition of building palatial homes when, in 1889, he began constructing a 250-room mountain retreat near Asheville. If the structure seemed immense, the grounds were colossal. Buying up overcut, burned-out forests and tired farmland in every direction, Vanderbilt acquired 125,000 acres. He then hired Olmsted to turn them into a proper setting for his home.

The Grand Design

Bill Alexander, landscape and forest historian at Biltmore, has spent the past 25 years researching Olmsted's time at the estate, and today he serves as a passionate steward of the designer's legacy.

"Olmsted first visited in the fall of 1888,"Bill says. "He spent a lot of time exploring on horseback and by foot and also influenced the placement of the mansion. Olmsted constructed at least two scaffolding towers so that he, Vanderbilt, and architect Richard Morris Hunt could climb up and see what the views would be like from different floor levels. They positioned the house to take the best advantage of the vistas."

Vanderbilt initially wanted to surround his home with a grand park like those he had seen in Europe. Olmsted, on the other hand, envisioned a series of small pleasure grounds around the mansion. He also designed a 250-acre Deer Park, a wooded game preserve like those found on English country estates. Most of the remaining land, some 100,000 acres, was planted and managed as timberland. He recommended that bottomland along the French Broad River, which flowed through the property, be used to raise cattle for manure to be used as fertilizer.

Windows on Nature

The gardens at Biltmore are spectacular, especially in spring, but one of the best experiences lies along the 3-mile approach road to the mansion. "Olmsted worked in concert with nature," Bill says. "His great strength was his mastery of grading and the landform, the subtle positioning of roads and paths so that you don't notice them when you're looking across the landscape. It's this grasp of scale and the earth that is the fundamental canvas of Olmsted."

The approach road required extensive grading and manipulation of the terrain. "He liked to go around probing the ground with a steel rod, looking for outcroppings of rock to expose," Bill relates. "He also had forests planted along the road to hide the vistas and build anticipation."

Olmsted loved to surprise, to draw the viewer through the landscape with a series of lovely discoveries, like one window opening to another. Follow the road as it snakes through the landscape, and a new treat appears around every curve. Bridges of stone, an Olmsted signature, cross small streams. Wildflowers spread blankets of color across miniature meadows. Borders grow lush with azaleas, mountain laurels, and rhododendrons that burst with seasonal color upon a background thick with hardwoods and dimpled with evergreens. "Plantings on Olmsted's grounds are like icing on the cake," Bill says.

One planting, an allee of tulip poplars lining the Esplanade leading to the mansion, is currently being replaced. "Olmsted intended for the trees to be a frame for the house," Bill says. "But over the years we've lost nearly a third of them to disease and weather. I've said many times that you can maintain the integrity of his landscape, but you just can't preserve each and every plant." In the spirit of preserving Olmsted's design, all the trees are being replaced at once, with work to be completed by early April.