What’s Out There
An O nline G u id e t o D es ig n e d La n ds ca p e s i n M a i n e a n d t h e U.S.
Camden Amphitheater. Photo credit National Gardens Club
Courtney Spearman
Maine’s design legacy is rich and includes the
nation’s first modernist landscape, the Camden
Amphitheater by Fletcher Steele as well as commissions
by Beatrix Farrand and the work of Carl Rust Parker,
a two-time member of the Olmsted firm who spent
virtually his entire career in Maine. Recently, in
partnership with the Maine Historical Society, some
150 Maine landscapes from Augusta to York, along
with Bangor, Bar Harbor and Bath, and 16 sites in
Portland, were added to The Cultural Landscape
Foundation’s What’s Out There database. This free,
searchable, on-line resource was started in 2009, and
now contains more than 1,400 designed landscapes
nationwide and 700 designer profiles, all illustrated
by more than 10,000 images..
Overall, the sites in Maine range from 14 public and
neighborhood parks, to 22 gardens and estates, 7
campuses, 16 squares/greens/commons and more.
They represent a diversity of styles that include
Picturesque (Evergreen Cemetery, Portland), Beaux
Arts (Capitol Park, Augusta), Arts and Crafts (Garland
Farm, Bar Harbor), Japanese (Asticou Azalea Garden,
Northeast Harbor), Colonial Revival (Little Orchard,
Mount Desert), Italianate (Hyde School, Bath), and
Modernist (Camden Amphitheatre).
Among the 16 Portland sites are Deering Oaks, a
bucolic 55-acre picturesque park (a remnant of a
261-acre 18th century farm) designed by William
Goodwin, and Boulevard Park, a picturesque work
designed by Carl Rust Parker in 1912 – one of the
few historic subdivisions in the state designed by a
landscape architect. Maine also has a wealth of
sites designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. and the
Olmsted Brothers office.
2013 Boston Society of Landscape Architects Fieldbook
95