Carol Grotne Belk Distinguished Lecture

Biltmore Estate: Frederick Law Olmsted's Landscape Masterpiece

With Bill Alexander

"Thanks to the managers of Biltmore Forest, such as Bill Alexander, Biltmore Forest is once again serving as a vanguard in mankind's quest to establish a benign relationship with nature. ...One of the main purposes of what has been done at Biltmore is to serve as a model for most everyplace else. ...Fingers crossed that more of us will be able to step forward to join the ranks." - Southern Forests Network

Join Bill Alexander, Landscape and Forest Historian for the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, for a fascinating historical overview of the estate landscape, which was designed by the founder of American landscape architecture, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903), and included a model forest, a working farm, a "deer park," an arboretum, miles of pleasure drives and the "home grounds" and gardens. Olmsted, whose design legacy includes the grounds for the US Capitol, Boston's "Emerald Necklace" park system and New York's Central Park, completed as his last great project, George Vanderbilt's 125,000 acre Biltmore Estate.

Vanderbilt hired Olmsted to create an estate in the style of an English manor, but Olmsted convinced him that the land was better suited for a different concept, with grand gardens near the house, a 12-mile arboretum connecting the house to the French-Broad River and a majestic, 100,000-acre forest beyond. Vanderbilt, unlike many of the public entities Olmsted had worked for, had the resources to realize all of Olmsted's plans.

Because much of the land that Vanderbilt purchased for the Biltmore estate had been cleared for farming and timber, Olmsted developed a plan for reforestation. He trained a team to identify damaged and poorly formed trees for removal, in order to provide room for the healthiest trees to grow and thrive. This forest became the basis for the Pisgah National Forest. Today, the Biltmore Estate is considered the birthplace of American forestry.

Olmsted's legacy is continued by Bill Alexander, whose new book, The Biltmore Nursery: A Botanical Legacy, describes the history and catalogs the botanicals of Biltmore's extensive landscape. A well respected and often-published botanist and landscape historian, Alexander has spent 30 years in the management and preservation of Biltmore Estate's landscape, with a passion and determination to conserve them according to the vision conceived by Olmsted and Vanderbilt.

The rich, botanical history of the Biltmore Estate resonates with environmentalists, historians, horticulturists and gardeners, landscape architects, students and lovers of nature.

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[ Belk Library and Information Commons ]

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