George Vanderbilt chose Frederick Law Olmsted, regarded as the founding father of American landscape architecture, to design the gardens and grounds of his estate. Known for designing Central Park in New York City, Olmsted envisioned Biltmore with formal gardens and naturalized areas, a major arboretum and nursery, and a systematically managed forest. One of his first priorities was creating a nursery to produce the millions of trees, shrubs, and other plants needed for the estate, and in 1890 he hired horticulturist Chauncey Beadle as nursery superintendent. Beadle stayed at Biltmore for 60 years, later becoming estate superintendent, helping bring Olmsted's plan to maturity, and adding his extensive azalea collection to the Azalea Garden. Much of the land Vanderbilt bought had been cleared, so Olmsted began reforesting worn-out farmland and trained foremen to improve existing woodland by removing poorly formed and damaged trees to give the best trees more room to grow. In 1892, Olmsted persuaded Vanderbilt to hire the trained forester Gifford Pinchot, who carried out a pioneering management plan intended both to improve the forest and return profit to the landowner, the first plan of its kind in America and a national model. Pinchot later left to lead the Division of Forestry that became the U.S. Forest Service. In 1895, German forester Dr. Carl A. Schenck took charge of Biltmore's forest of more than 100,00 acres, and in 1898 he founded the Biltmore Forest School, the first such school in the country. In 1914, Edith Vanderbilt sold 86,700 acres of the estate's forested mountain land to the U.S. Government to establish a national forest named Pisgah, and in 1968, 6,500 acres of Pisgah National Forest were designated The Cradle of Forestry in America.