As part of the dam's construction, Frederick Law Olmsted's Charlesbank was extended from Charles Circle to the Harvard Bridge, and Lowell was responsible for the landscape design of the Boston Embankment, now universally known as the Esplanade.

Some of his other commissions included Lowell Lecture Hall at Harvard and academic buildings at Phillips Academy Andover, Simmons College, and Brown University.

The house remained the residence of succeeding presidents until 1971, when Derek Bok (1971–1991) moved his young family to the bucolic grounds of the Elmwood colonial mansion.

His obituary in The New York Times notes that he designed or "fitted up" gardens for the elder J. Pierpont Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and the Piping Rock Club.

Additional garden-related projects included those of T. Jefferson Coolidge, Mrs. Oscar Lasigi in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and Payne Whitney in Manhasett on Long Island.

He taught an important group of landscape architects their trade including Mabel Keyes Babcock (1862–1931), George Elberton Burnap (1885–1938), Marian Cruger Coffin (1876–1957), Martha Brookes Hutcheson (1871–1959), and Rose Standish Nichols.