8 Landscape Gardening 



false taste is not likely to be a permanent one in a commu- 

 nity where everything is so much the subject of criticism. 



\Yilh regard to the literature and practice of Landscape 

 Gardening as an art, in North America, almost everything 

 is yet before us, comparatively little having yet been done. 

 Almost all the improvements of the grounds of our finest 

 country residences, have been carried on under the direc- 

 tion of the proprietors themselves, suggested by their own 

 good taste, in many instances improved by the study of 

 European authors, or by a personal inspection of the finest 

 places abroad. The only American work previously pub- 

 lished which treats directly of Landscape Gardening, is 

 the American Gardener's Calendar, by Bernard McMahon 

 of Philadelphia. The only practitioner of the art, of any 

 note, was the late M. Parmentier of Brooklyn, Long Island.* 



M. Andre Parmentier was the brother of that celebrated 

 horticulturist, the Chevalier Parmentier, Mayor of Enghien, 

 Holland. He emigrated to this country about the year 

 1824, and in the Horticultural Nurseries which he estab- 

 lished at Brooklyn, he gave a specimen of the natural style 

 of laying out grounds, combined with a scientific arrange- 

 ment of plants, which excited public curiosity, and con- 

 tributed not a little to the dissemination of a taste for the 

 natural mode of landscape gardening. 



During M. Parmentier's residence on Long Island, he was 

 almost constantly applied to for plans for laying out the 

 grounds of country seats, by persons in various parts of 

 the Union, as well as in the immediate proximity of New 

 York. In many cases he not only surveyed the demesne 

 to be improved, but furnished the plants and trees neces- 

 sary to carry out his designs. Several plans were prepared 

 by him for residences of note in the Southern States; and 

 two or three places in Upper Canada, especially near Mont- 

 real, were, we believe, laid out by his own hands and 

 stocked from his nursery grounds. In his periodical cata- 

 logue, he arranged the hardy trees and shrubs that flourish 



* These statements are obviously out of dale in I'.t'Jl, l>ul arc inter- 

 esting historically as showing what sort of a country Mr. Downing found 

 himself in in 1811. 



