Pioneers of American Landscape Design

In the United States there is no singular source book or finding aid for researchers seeking information on those visionary practitioners who have bad a significant impact on the designed American landscape. Possessing a broad range of skills and training, these historical figures included landscape gardeners, horticulturists, nursery owners, landscape architects, engineers, planners, architects, cemetery designers, golf course architects, superintendents, educators and writers. To date, these chronicled practitioners have posed a challenge for landscape historians and landscape architects alike when attempting to evaluate a property's significance, or establish its necessary context. National Register Bulletin 18: How to Evaluate and Nominate Designed Historic Landscapes states that "determining the relationship between an individual Landscape and the historic developmental and practice of !landscape architecture is an essentially factor in determining significance." If we are to successfully _ __ , understand the significance and integrity of an individual property and prescribe a landscape preservation treatment, it seems critical to understand individual practitioners' design philosophies, their career canons, and the ability to identify and evaluate what is extant of that legacy on the American landscape today. How then can we readily obtain this much needed contextual information?