Frederick Law Olmsted’s Franklin Park hosts a small hillside population of American beech saplings. Though juvenile in form, these small trees may be many years old, waiting for the mature canopy to die. This “micro-narrative” uses this case to describe the dilemmas of landscape architectural preservation in the public realm. Strictly form-based approaches are inadequate to respond to changing human use; approaches grounded in restoration ecology suffer from a “crisis of baselines” in the face of ongoing environmental change. The tension between material authenticity and ecological resilience can be productively explored to seek new design potentials for preservation.
