building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

At the same time, studies attempted to improve agricultural practices, imperative
premises, in Europe as in America, for a true development of gardening. In 1828,
William Prince (1766‐1842) published a Treatise on Horticulture and in 1838 Robert
Manning (1784‐1842) his Book of Fruits, being a descriptive catalogue of the most
valuable varieties of the pear, apple, peach, plum, and cherry for New England
culture. From 1830‐1840, publications and articles regarding vine growing began to
appear. This had already been widely practised on both the Atlantic and the Pacific
coast in the first half of the century. In fact, the vineyards offered handsome profits.
In 1846, Nicholas Longworth, (1783‐1863), well‐known for his wine production,
exploited his success in viniculture to write a pamphlet entitled The Cultivation of
the Grape and Manufacture of Wine. Amongst the colourful Babel of agricultural
amateurs and expert gardeners of New England, the top landscapers could be
boiled down to three key people: André Parmentier 240 (1780‐1830), Alexander
Jackson Davis 241 (1803‐1892) and Andrew Jackson Downing 242 (1815‐1852).
Parmentier was a landscape designer in the widest sense of the word. He imported
from his native Belgium his European knowledge of the picturesque garden and put
his project design skills to the test in the vicinity of New York. On his arrival in
America in 1824, he settled in Brooklyn, Long Island, and in only six years became
an authority on landscape gardening. First, he created a horticultural nursery, which
aroused public curiosity in the layout, which mirrored the scientific nature of the
choice and combination of plants and tastefully recreated natural situations and
scenes. This activity gave him considerable publicity and repaid him by the
commission of a wide range of landscape gardening projects not only along the
banks of the River Hudson but also, as Downing himself witnessed, in the southern
states and near Montreal in Canada. He published a regular plant catalogue with
the indirect purpose of advertising his nursery, and in 1828, he wrote an essay
entitled Landscape and Picturesque Gardens. Unfortunately no precise information
240 See NEWTON, Norman T., Design on the Land. The Development of Landscape Architecture,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971
241 See PECK, Amelia (ed.), Alexander Jackson Davis: American architect, 1803‐1892, New York, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rizzoli, 1992;
242 See YGLESIAS, Caren, The complete House and Grounds, Learning from Andrew Jackson Downing’s
domestic architecture, Chicago, Center for American Places at Columbia College, 2011;
144