Downing^ s Landscape-Gardening. 421 



Art. II. A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape- 

 Gardening, adapted to North America ; tvifh a View to the Improve- 

 ment of Country Residences : comprising Historical Notices and 

 General Principles of the Art, Directions for laying out Gjomids 

 and arranging Plantations, the Description and Cultivation of 

 Hardy Trees, Decorative Accompaniments to the House and. 

 Grounds, the Formation of Pieces of Artifcial IVater, Flotve)'- 

 Gardens, Sjc. With Remarks on Rural Architecture. By A. J. 

 Downing. 8vo, pp. 4-51, plates, and numerous woodcuts. New 

 York and London^ 1841. 



A TASTE for rural improvements, Mr. Downing observes, is advancing with 

 great rapidity in America ; but, thougli immense sums are employed, profes- 

 sional talent is seldom required. Every man fancies himself an amateur, and 

 endeavours to plan and arrange his own residence ; and the results are, as might 

 be expected, much incongruity, and great waste of time and money. The 

 object of Mr. Downing's volume is to teach amateurs how to proceed in such a 

 manner as, with comparative ease, to produce delightful and satisfactory results. 

 After giving a short historical sketch of the progress of landscape-gardening 

 among mankind generally, and pointing out the superiority of a taste for this 

 art over that of a taste for pictures, he proceeds to show (in p. 19.) the pro- 

 gress of the art in the United States. 



" The number of individuals who possess in America," he says, "wealth and 

 refinement sufficient to enable them to enjoy the pleasures of a country life, 

 and who desire in their private residences so much of the beauties of landscape- 

 gardening as may be realised without any enormous expenditure of means, is 

 daily increasing ; and, in half a century more, there will exist a greater number 

 of beautiful villas in the Atlantic States than in any other country in Europe, 

 England alone excepted." 



The only American work on landscape-gardening is the American Gardeners^ 

 Calendar, by Bernard M'Mahon of Philadelphia; and 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 the 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 

 established at Brooklyn, he gave a specimen of the natural style of laying out 

 grounds, combined with a scientific arrangement of plants, which excited 

 public curiosity, and contributed 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 con- 

 stantly applied to for plans for laying out the grounds of countrj' 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 im- 

 proved, but furnished the plants and trees necessary to carry out his plans. 

 Several plans were prepared by him for residences of note in the southern 

 states ; and two or three places in Uj)per Canada, especially near Rlontreal, 

 were, we believe, laid out by his own hands, and stocked from his nursery 

 grounds. In his periodical catalogue, he arranged the hardy trees and shrubs 

 that flourish in this latitude in classes, according to their height, &c., and 

 published a short treatise on the superior claims of the natural over the 

 formal or geometric style of laying out grounds. Jn short, we consider 

 M. Parmentier's labours and example as having effected, directly, far more for 

 landscape-ganiening in America, than those of any other individual whatever. 



" To the novice in landscape-gardening and rural en)beHishment, nothin"- is 

 more instructive than a personal inspection of country seats, where the grounds 

 are laid out in a tasteful manner. In examining such, the mind is, at a single 

 view, more fully impressed with the beauties of the art and its ciipabilities, 



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