Category: Personal Reflections

Holly Redell-Witte reflects on a lifetime spent in Olmsted landscapes, from Prospect Park in Brooklyn to Seattle's Volunteer Park and beyond.

Author Tom Paine reflects on Olmsted's 1843 voyage to China as a merchant sailor, and how it inspired his future career.

Come along as Mark Roessler visits Hartford— Connecticut’s capital city and Olmsted’s birthplace— with historian Jana Colacino. 

Come along as Mark Roessler, our communications specialist, visits Olmsted and Vaux’s Prospect Park with Prospect Park Alliance Archivist Amy Peck.

Writer, historian and filmmaker Laurence Cotton offers an impressionistic essay on Laurelhurst Park in Portland, OR.

As a staff member, I never imagined promoting the parks and principles of the founder of American landscape architecture would be quite so interesting… or fun.

Come along as Mark Roessler, our communications specialist, visits Buttonwood Park in New Bedford, MA.

Olmsted Linear Park Alliance recently hosted its annual Green & Gold Gala, raising over $65,000 to support the preservation of the park and the care of its magnificent trees.

Visiting the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, one author finds a greater meaning for our lives and deeper purpose for our lands.

In an effort to make Olmsted plans more readable and accessible to the general public, Landscape Architect Elena Saporta used Adobe Photoshop to restore and colorize plans for Boston's Emerald Necklace, Chicago's Jackson Park, Rochester's Seneca Park and Atlanta's Druid Hills.

From growing up in a designed landscape to studying landscape architecture and watching the environmental movement grow, Thomas M. Paine's life journey has been heavily influenced by Olmsted and his principles.

Kathy Smith recalls growing up near Washington Park in Milwaukee, WI, and her trip back to revisit this special place.

Olmsted Network President & CEO Dede Petri recounts the trip of a lifetime, retracing Frederick Law Olmsted's footsteps in England with John Phibbs, Gilly Kitching and 12 intrepid Olmsted pilgrims. Olmsted’s first book and delightful travelogue, Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England, provides the backdrop for these observations.

Olmsted relative and landscape architect Susan Olmsted recounts the magic of walking in her ancestor’s footsteps as she helps restore California’s Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias for future generations.

Landscape historian and the author Judith B Tankard remembers her formative years in Forest Hills Gardens.