Country Place Era Garden

Large residential properties designed with an obvious, sometimes ostentatious, expression of affluence. Characteristic design features include formal garden styles, such as allées, terraces, fountains, and garden sculpture. Designers worked in close partnership with clients to create extravagant gardens inspired by European and Asian precedents in order to lend a sense of tradition, age, and affluence to what, in many cases, was “new money.” Taking inspiration from European Beaux-Arts design styles, there was a return to symmetry and more formal geometries. Prominent designers included Charles Platt, Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., and Beatrix Farrand. Instigated in part by the vast fortunes industrialization created for the wealthy, for most this era ended abruptly with the onset of the Great Depression.