What is the history of landscape architecture? Q&A

Question. What is the history of landscape architecture?

Answer:  It can be seen as the history of garden design before 1860 and the work of landscape architects after 1860,  or it can be seen as the long history of both garden design and urban design or it can be seen as the even longer history of design-by-humans on the natural environment (therefore including agriculture, forestry and other land uses). This would make its age 160 years, 5000 years or 12,000 years. I favour the middle alternative and trace the written history of landscape architecture to about 4000 years ago. But I agree with Geoffrey Jellicoe that the art of landscape design goes back about 30,000 years and is therefore much older than architecture.

It can be treated either: as equivalent to the history of garden design or as a history of both garden design and urban design or as a complete history of design-by-humans on the natural environment (therefore including agriculture, forestry and other land uses). I favour the second alternative and trace the written history of landscape architecture to about 5000 years ago.

https://youtu.be/C9pRbOAYFM4

Who was the first landscape architect?

Frederick Law Olmsted was the first person to use the term in its modern professional sense but the art of designing landscapes for human use is very much older. Jellicoe suggests 30,000 years, dating it to prehistoric cave paintings and the places then designed for guiding herds of deer etc into places where they could be ambushed. This makes landscape architecture about 20,000 years older than building architecture and gives it a stronger claim to being ‘the mother of the arts’.