In 1857, Vaux recruited an inexperienced Frederick Law Olmsted, who had never before designed a landscape plan, to help design the Greensward Plan, which would become Central Park.

Haussmann's renovation of Paris and New York's Greensward Plan in the 1850s and 1860s turned new attention to the role that parks can play in urban development.

A competition was held which was awarded to "the Greensward Plan" from Olmsted & Vaux.

In 1858, their joint design, the Greensward Plan, was selected in a design competition for the new Central Park in New York City.

Almost from the instant that Olmsted and Vaux's "Greensward Plan" beat out 33 other entries in a competition in 1858, people have suggested adding structures to its deceptively simple landscape, a phenomenon that continues to this day.

Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux developed what came to be known as the Greensward Plan, which was selected as the winning design.

During this period, more than 18,500 cubic yards (14,000 m3) of topsoil had been transported in from New Jersey, because the original soil was not fertile or substantial enough to sustain the various trees, shrubs, and plants called for by the Greensward Plan.

In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan.

It must be remembered that the Mall, as the major formal part of the famous Greensward Plan, was designed as a tree-lined allee to the Terrace.

After Bryant printed on his newspaper press the winning design for the park in 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted's and Calvert Vaux's "Greensward Plan," he successfully supported his friend Olmsted's candidacy for the park's superintendency.