Through his many books and in the Horticulturist, the nation's first journal about landscape gardening, Andrew Jackson Downing (1815–1852) promoted a naturalistic style of landscape design as the “modern” alternative to the classical geometry of the “ancient” gardens of Italy and France. In this compelling biography, David Schuyler explores Downing's efforts to adapt English aesthetic principles to American climate and republican social institutions, delving the implicit complications of class in his prescriptions for American society.