Lake Waban is a natural lake located on the campus of Wellesley College. The lake covers an area of about 60 acres and has a maximum depth of 22 feet. The lake also provides recreational opportunities for the college community and the public, such as boating, fishing, hiking, and ice skating. Lake Waban is named after the chief of the Natick tribe, who lived in the area before the arrival of European settlers.

The 500-acre Wellesley College campus overlooks Lake Waban and includes evergreen, deciduous woodlands and open meadows. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., Boston's preeminent landscape architect at the beginning of the 20th century, described Wellesley's landscape as "not merely beautiful, but with a marked individual character not represented so far as I know on the ground of any other college in the country". He also wrote: "I must admit that the exceedingly intricate and complex topography and the peculiarly scattered arrangement of most of the buildings somewhat baffled me". The campus is adjacent to the privately owned Hunnewell Estates Historic District, the gardens of which can be viewed from the lake's edge on campus.

The original master plan for Wellesley's campus landscape was developed by Olmsted, Arthur Shurcliff, and Ralph Adams Cram in 1921. This landscape-based concept represented a break from the architecturally-defined courtyard and quadrangle campus arrangement that was typical of American campuses at the time. The 720-acre site's glaciated topography, a series of meadows, and native plant communities shaped the original layout of the campus, resulting in a campus architecture that is integrated into its landscape.