From Capability to Peculiarity: Adapting British Principles to American Practices

Almost as a farewell caution, a month before Andrew Jackson Downing died in 1852, he wrote an editorial essay for his popular monthly journal The Horticulturist. In it, Downing decried the inability of immigrant British gardeners to adapt their horticultural skills to American climate, topography and soil. Two earlier Downing books - a well-received treatise on landscape gardening and another on rural domestic architecture - included the words 'Adapted to North America' in their titles. By the publication of his second book on architecture in 1850, Downing thought these words as well as the idea of transporting and interpreting foreign information for an American audience was no longer needed or desirable. This paper traces Downing's adaptation of Humphry Repton's landscape design theory as published by John Claudius Loudon, the British landscape encyclopedist Downing considered a mentor. Landscape principles transferred to America in Downing's instructions to respect the natural scene, to express dignified pursuits of domestic leisure in built form, and to conceal all evidence of what made dwelling in this way possible. What Downing asked his audience to reject were foreign rules about formulaic style that did not appreciate local climate and an American mode of life.

In the mid-nineteenth century, Americans interested in landscape and garden design knew Downing, the most prominent writer on the subject. At this time, the English landscape was transforming in part to reduce the presence of foreign elements in gardens referencing other places and times. New ways of seeing the land as landscape capable of improvement helped discern landscape vocabulary now considered quintessentially English. These developments coincide with the developing garden design profession. Downing adapted British principles for American practices based more on the ability of design to link peculiarities of people, place and artifice. In doing so, Downing set expectations for domestic design and suburban land planning still evident today.