ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS 



them all with the observation that real 

 American landscape gardening did not 

 exist until about 1850. 



Downing is by all odds the first of 

 American landscape gardeners. He did 

 some little work on private places about 

 Newburgh and in Washington on the 

 grounds about the Capitol, and the Smith- 

 sonian Institution. Very little, if any, of 

 this work has been preserved. Downing's 

 ability as a student of this art is nearly 

 always judged by one piece of work, 

 namely, his book on Landscape Garden- 

 ing, with occasionally some slight addition 

 for the pleasing essays in the "Horti- 

 culturist." These writings, indeed, show 

 a man of great refinement of character, 

 a man of rather severely voluptuous tastes, 

 of somewhat aristocratic temper, retiring 

 and sensitive, fond of everything beautiful, 

 but with a taste influenced by the spirit of 

 his time toward the curiosities of beauty, 

 a man highly appreciative of the natural 

 landscape, but still more passionately fond 

 of trees, shrubs and fruits. We must not 

 forget that Downing — like hundreds of his 

 followers — ^was a nurseryman before he 

 was a landscape gardener, and this fact had 



155 



