The leading American garden writer and designer of his day was born in Newburgh, New York. His admiration for John Claudius Loudon is apparent from his books and their illustrations. Downing edited The Horticulturalist and wrote a Treatise on the theory and practice of landscape gardening, adapted to North America (1841). This book has a chapter on 'Landscape or rural architecture' which must be the source from which Olmsted took the term 'landscape architecture'. It was Downing who persuaded Olmsted's future partner, Calvert Vaux, to move from England to America. Downing was a protagonist for public parks and had he not drowned at the age of 37 it is likely that he, rather than Olmsted, would have received the commission to design Central Park in New York.
Selections from Downing's Treatise are on the CD
Andrew Jackson Downing
