24 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



feeling, a taste, or an improvement, is contagious ; and 

 once fairly appreciated and established in one portion of 

 the country, it is disseminated with a celerity that is 

 indeed wonderful, to every other portion. And though it 

 is necessarily the case where amateurs of any art are 

 more numerous than its professors, that there will be, in 

 devising and carrying plans into execution, many specimens 

 of bad taste, and perhaps a sufficient number of efforts tc 

 improve without any real taste whatever, still we are 

 convinced the effect of our rural embellishments will in 

 the end be highly agreeable, as a false taste is not likely 

 to be a permanent one in a community where everything 

 is so much the subject of criticism. 



With 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 

 direction 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 

 published 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 esta- 

 blished at Brooklyn, he gave a specimen of the natural 



