Frederick Law Olmsted’s Unexpected Political Bloom: The Nomination He Promptly Pruned

June 21, 1872

On this day, Frederick Law Olmsted, the mastermind behind America's most beloved public gardens, found himself thrust into the political arena—much to his own surprise.

The lauded landscape architect was nominated in absentia as Vice President of the United States, a position for which he had neither campaigned nor consented.

One can only imagine the shock that rippled through Olmsted's studio when news of this presumptuous nomination reached his ears!

The audacious proposition came from banker James McKim and philanthropist Robert Minturn (the latter being instrumental in the creation of New York's Central Park, where Olmsted had already etched his genius into the American landscape). These gentlemen, in their infinite wisdom and without bothering to consult the man himself, proposed a ticket featuring Olmsted as Vice President alongside William Groesbeck, a former United States representative from Ohio, for President. This political maneuver was orchestrated under the banner of the national American Democratic-Republicans.

When Olmsted caught wind of this uninvited political elevation, he wasted no time in pruning away such unwanted growth from his career.

Like a gardener decisively removing an invasive species, he immediately quashed his own nomination.

With the precision that characterized his landscape designs, he planted a firm rebuttal in the New York Post that read:

"My name was used without my knowledge in the resolutions of the gentlemen who met on Friday at the Fifth Avenue Hotel..."

Yet privately, our reluctant politician was rather like a perennial that secretly enjoys the attention of admirers while pretending indifference.

Sources reveal Olmsted was quietly pleased by the support. This unexpected political nomination served as yet another bloom in the garden of his public esteem—one more indication of the revered figure Olmsted had become in American society.

For gardeners today, this historical footnote offers a delicious irony: the man who shaped America's relationship with managed wilderness was himself resistant to being cultivated for political purposes.

Olmsted understood that just as some plants flourish best in specific conditions, his own talents were most fruitful when applied to the artful arrangement of nature rather than the chaotic terrain of politics.

How fascinating that the designer of spaces meant for public enjoyment should so firmly resist a role that would have placed him even more prominently in the public eye!

Perhaps Olmsted recognized what every seasoned gardener knows—that sometimes the most important work happens away from the spotlight, in the careful planning and patient nurturing that precedes any garden's glory.