Central Park in New York City. The Blue<br /> Ridge Parkway winding through Virginia and<br /> North Carolina. These places arc two of the best-<br /> known designed landscapes in America.<br /> What is not generally known is the challenge<br /> these sites posed to their designers. In what is<br /> now Central Park was a blocks-long rubble pile.<br /> Where the Blue Ridge Parkway today skirts the<br /> mountain tops were eroded mountain lands, cut-<br /> over forests and commercialized "scenic" areas.<br /> What exists now--even years after their work<br /> was completed--is so perfectly executed as to be-<br /> lie the genius of the design, thc vision of the land-<br /> scape architects and the work of collaborating<br /> professions and trades that made these projects<br /> possible.<br /> These and many other sites detailed in this<br /> book have become favorite places for people to<br /> gather, to enjoy both actively and passively, to be<br /> "in nature"--that is, in natural settings shaped by<br /> landscape architects.<br /> As with the great plazas and gardens of the Old<br />World, other designed landscapes in America have<br />paid less homage to nature and more attention to<br />the joy of created space. Landscape architects<br />have designed countless urban plazas, squares and<br />public spaces that, while obviously designed, are<br />indeed places for people.<br /> Regardless of whether the ultimate landscape<br />design is natural or created, perhaps the most in-<br />teresting aspect of landscape architcctme today is<br />its diversity: the various sciences that are brought<br />together, the arts, the variety of "hard" paving<br />and structural materials and "soft" materials such<br />as water and plants, the differing,scales of the pal-<br />ettes on which landscape architects work. This<br />diversity ranges from planning for regions and<br />ecosystems to designing a vest-pocket park that<br />enriches an urban scene. Landscape architects are<br />trained to manage and coordinate projects that<br />cross professional lines from infrastructure to ar-<br />chitecture and crJ,gineering, sociolow to the fine<br />arts, irrigation to horticulture and biology.