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Harvard University’s historic and preeminent Arnold Arboretum, part of Boston’s Emerald Necklace, is a scientific research station, a public park, and a tree museum. The innovative design of the 281-acre site is the result of collaboration between landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and Charles Sprague Sargent, director of the Arboretum and a leading proponent for national forest conservation.

Dating back to 1839, the Boston Public Garden is the first public botanical garden in the United States. While it is adjacent to Boston Common, the style of the Boston Public Garden is much more decorative.

The creation of the Charles River Dam and the subsequent formation of the Charles River Reservation transformed the shoreline of Boston and Cambridge from muddy flats and wet marshes to acres of beautiful river scenery filled with recreational opportunities.

The historic Forest Hills Cemetery in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston is a fine example of a 19th century rural, or “garden” cemetery, listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Like Mount Auburn Cemetery, Forest Hills integrates romantic and picturesque landscape design ideals with memorial architecture and monuments.

Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of American landscape architecture, created pastoral and picturesque scenery believed to cure stress caused by urban living.

Lynn Woods represents a second type of colonial common. This 2,200 acre forested park, owned by the industrial city of Lynn, Massachusetts, encompasses almost twenty percent of Lynn’s land area.

The Metropolitan Park System of Greater Boston, in Massachusetts, is especially noteworthy because it is the first regional park system in the United States. Considered a work of visionary regional planning, the park system comprises parks, reservations, parkways, and roads. Established by the Metropolitan Park Commission in 1893, Boston’s park system contributed significantly to the American park movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Located in portions of Malden, Medford, Winchester, Stoneham, and Melrose, the 2,575-acre Middlesex Fells Reservation is one of the first reservations created by the Metropolitan Parks Commission.

Mount Auburn Cemetery is the first landscaped rural or “garden” cemetery in the United States. Established in 1831 in Watertown and Cambridge, Massachusetts, the cemetery was not only designed as a resting place for the deceased, but also as an attraction and pleasure ground, with picturesque landscapes, winding paths, a variety of horticulture, and sculptural art.

As one of the first park systems created in the United States, Boston’s Olmsted Park System served as a model for metropolitan open space planning initiatives elsewhere.