Excerpt from Landscape Architecture: A Definition and a Resume of Its Past and Present

There is at the present time much apparent misunderstanding of the terms Landscape Architecture and Landscape Gardening. It is not unusual to hear it stated that "this calling a man a landscape architect instead of a landscape gardener" is merely a fad "filling one's mind with images of quarries, stone cutters, creaking derricks, tapping trowels, and the like, instead of with pictures of free hand dealings with sunshine and shadow, trees, flowering shrubs and leaping fountains." One well known writer has even gone so far as to state that "the men most deeply engaged in the art have not decided what to call it," and that it is suspicioned "that the present fashion among the professional brethren of calling themselves landscape architects is promoted by two accidental causes: first, the feeling that architecture sounds bigger than gardening and can demand a better fee, and second, the fact that the architectural style of landscape work is the present vogue among wealthy clients."

I am going to ask you to look at this a little more carefully with me and see what is true in this discussion. In the first place, the term is not a "recent fad." Frederick Law Olmsted, the elder, called himself a landscape architect away back in 1856, when he first entered upon the work of developing Central Park in New York City, and the fact that he did so, and continued to so designate himself during the whole of his career has had much to do with the general adoption of the term. But the fact that one man, even an eminent one, adopted this title is perhaps not entirely sufficient, although those of us who are familiar with Mr. Olmsted's work and with his wonderful genius and mastery of the subject in all of its details may well feel assured that he did not adopt the title without most careful thought. Unfortunately he did not in his writings, so far as I am aware, really explain his reasons. He was so immersed in the great battle then going on, for public parks for large cities, in showing their value and necessity and in laying down the principles and executing the work of these great undertakings that he apparently had little time to explain fully why he assumed the title.

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