Frederick Law Olmsted worked in farming, travel, and journalism before becoming a landscape architect. His reporting journeys through the American South examined slavery and the region's economy; the resulting accounts were later collected in The Cotton Kingdom. Observation of landscapes and social institutions helped shape his view that public parks could improve urban life by providing restorative experiences accessible to people beyond the wealthy.

In 1858 Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won the competition for New York's Central Park with their Greensward plan. They integrated open meadows, wooded areas, water, and separate circulation routes for different users. The park's apparently natural scenery required extensive engineering, planting, and management. Construction also involved the displacement of existing residents, including the predominantly Black community of Seneca Village. Political disputes over administration repeatedly complicated the work, and the collaboration with Vaux remained central to the design rather than a background contribution.

During the Civil War, Olmsted served as executive secretary of the United States Sanitary Commission, organizing civilian support for soldiers' health and welfare. He subsequently managed a mining property in California and prepared an influential report supporting protection and public use of Yosemite. Returning to landscape practice, he and his collaborators designed Prospect Park in Brooklyn and other urban projects. His work expanded from individual parks to connected parkways and metropolitan systems, seeking to combine recreation, movement, and the preservation of distinctive scenery.

Olmsted's later practice included Boston's Emerald Necklace, the grounds of the United States Capitol, university campuses, residential communities, the Biltmore estate, and the landscape of Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. At his Brookline office, Fairsted, he developed a professional organization that trained assistants and involved his sons and other designers. His approach emphasized the unity of a composition, attention to site conditions, and the long development of living landscapes. Illness ended his active work in the 1890s, and he died in 1903. His career helped establish landscape architecture as a profession and shaped enduring debates about urban nature, civic health, public access, and the social consequences of large-scale planning.