Pioneer Information
Hudak received a B.S. in Horticulture and Landscape Architecture from Pennsylvania State College in 1951, and joined the Olmsted Brothers firm in 1953. Mountain Lake Sanctuary in Lake Wales, Florida was one of the first projects Hudak became involved with, taking over day-to-day project management from William Lyman Phillips. In the 1950s and 1960s, Hudak established himself as the firm’s planting specialist. In 1963, shortly after the firm was renamed as Olmsted Associates, Hudak assumed tenancy of Fairsted, Frederick Law Olmsted’s home and office in Brookline, Massachusetts, where he introduced new plant materials into the landscape, including azaleas, yews, rhododendrons, and local daylilies. In 1964, Hudak gave up his financial partnership in the firm and his tenancy at Fairsted, though he remained with Olmsted Associates for another fifteen years, eventually becoming vice president in 1978. He worked on projects including campus plans for the University of Mississippi, Mississippi State, and Harvard Business School, and planting plans for numerous projects including Maryland’s Patapsco Tunnel development, Duke University’s campus, the Sloan Kettering Institute in Rye, New York, Fort Tryon Park in New York City, and several private estates. Outside of his work with Olmsted Associates, Hudak lectured on horticulture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and at the Radcliffe Seminars Program and wrote extensively on plant identification and garden design. His books, including Gardening with Perennials Month by Month, were accessible to the home gardener, and as a result he formed active relationships with garden clubs around the country. Hudak became a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects in 1992.
