

What’s in a name?
I’m descended from a renown lineage in the Landscape Architecture profession. Fredrick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) was the father of our profession in America and created such notable places as Central Park and Prospect Park in New York, the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC and our own Boston Parks System. He foresaw the impact that urbanization would have on Americans and preemptively worked to preserve natural places for everyone. He was a bit of a renaissance man before he founded this profession. He traveled through the southern slave states recording his observations of how slavery restricted rather than expanded the southern economy, lead the Sanitary Commission during the Civil War which was the precursor to the Red Cross, and managed a gold mine in Yosemite and became an early petitioner for the preservation of Yosemite Valley.