Saving the Abandoned Home of Frederick Law Olmsted, Central Park Designer, on Staten Island

The Cultural Landscape Foundation writes that Olmsted “used the site as a design and horticultural laboratory, growing cabbages, potatoes, turnips, and more than 5,000 pear trees from France. Olmsted planted Cedars of Lebanon, black walnut, mulberry, linden, and ginkgo trees, some of which remain on the site. He also honed his technical and design skills, creating a dramatic, curved driveway, draining marshes to increase usable acreage, moving outbuildings farther away from the house to hide them from view, and adding water plants to the utilitarian barnyard pond to create more scenic environs.”