Bayard Cutting Arboretum State Park - Oakdale, New York
Posted by: 
moelsla
N 40° 44.359 W 073° 09.770
18T E 655119 N 4511442
In 1884 William Bayard Cutting, civic leader and entrepreneur, acquired 600+ acres along the Connetquot River. Cutting hired Charles Haight in 1885 to build a Tudor-style mansion and Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. was commission to do the landscape design
Waymark Code: WM18QQ2
Location: New York, United States
Date Posted: 09/13/2023
Views: 1
From the Bayard Cutting Arboretum Website. (
visit link)
Olmsted retained much of the natural beauty of the acreage—the contrast of open and closed spaces, dense woods with marshy lowlands, and broad rolling meadows with sizable oak and tupelo groupings—enhancing the natural woodland verges with shrubs of textural vivacity to cultivate an expansive English park-like effect. Around domestic spaces, he recommended no formal plantings but rather varied shrub masses, some native, some more exotic, to take advantage of the beneficial growing conditions and river views. These plantings have attained massive sizes over the decades.
Olmsted renovated circulation routes and the entrance and boundary walls, adding massed native rhododendrons. A pinetum, with a rich display of conifers, was purportedly planted with saplings sourced by Charles Sprague Sargent from the Arnold Arboretum; Cutting may have drawn inspiration from an 1880s visit to the H.H. Hunnewell estate in Wellesley, MA, with its sizable pinetum.
After Cutting died in 1912, his family continued to seek occasional Olmsted firm advice to transition the grounds into an arboretum. In 1926-27, his son-in-law Henry C. James hired Olmsted Brothers to plan a small subdivision on a southeastern portion of the acreage. In 1936, Mrs. Cutting and her daughter Olivia gave 200 acres, including the house, to the Long Island State Park Commission. With the family’s million- dollar bequest, the state was able to provide visitor amenities, expand the nature trails, and acquire more property, including the notable Dairy. Additionally, a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program was established in 2012. The site was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.