At 125,000 acres, George W. Vanderbilt’s Biltmore was one of the largest residential commissions ever undertaken in the U.S. Between 1889 and 1895, the self-sufficient estate, complete with working farm and fully integrated horticulture, forestry, and land management programs,  was designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt and Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. Olmsted’s innovative recommendation to surround a 250-acre pleasure park with a commercial timber forest prompted Vanderbilt to employ Gifford Pinchot, who later established the U.S. Forest Service, and Carl Schenck, who, with Schenck, established the nation’s first forestry education program, the Biltmore Forest School.

The approximately 40-acre estate landscape of Biltmore has five distinct gardens. The Italian Garden, on a terrace below the chateau, has formal water lily pools, grass panels, and statuary. Below this, Olmsted developed a "ramble" with walkways winding through flowering shrubs. The square, four-acre Walled Garden holds symmetrical flower beds with a central grape-covered arcade to the Conservatory. The naturalistic Azalea Garden, originally known as "the Glen," was planted by the Olmsted Brothers firm; Chauncey Beadle, Biltmore employee from 1890 to 1949, built on this legacy, gifting his azaleas to Biltmore in 1940.
 
George's widow Edith Stuyvesant Vanderbilt sold 85,000 acres to the federal government, now part of Pisgah National Forest. First designated a National Historic Landmark in 1963, in 2002 Biltmore’s nomination was revised to expand its recognition and include its second important trio: Chauncey Beadle, Edith Vanderbilt, and her attorney, Julius Green Adams.