Even when they laid out the one formal area of the park, the Mall, to receive the promenading crowds, they placed it with a climax view of woodlands. The elm-lined Mall leads to the magnificent Terrace and Arcade, and to the Lake with the Ramble beyond. In an era such as ours, so preoccupied by questions of environment, the Ramble, with abundant and variegated planting, is at the heart of this manmade landscape. Bird life, which had disappeared, returned. Today Central Park is a major pause of migrants on the Great Atlantic Flyway.
Bird watching, especially in spring and fall, is one of the rewards of the great park.
Nature, given care and maintenance, renews itself and flourishes. In wandering through the park, the visitor may ask how it all came about. Step into the Metropolitan Museum of Art to come upon the source, pictures by two Frenchmen and one Italian of the 1600s. Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin created their ideal landscape of the ancient Romans, and Salvator Rosa his conception of bucolic nature. Very popular, their work inspired a new style of landscape design, variously called the picturesque or the English garden.