Turf War.

In 1841, Andrew Jackson Downing published the first landscape-gardening book aimed at an American audience. At the time, Downing was twenty-five years old and living in Newburgh, New York. He owned a nursery, which he had inherited from his father, and for several years had been publishing loftily titled articles, such as "Remarks on the Duration of the Improved Varieties of New York Fruit Trees," in horticultural magazines. Downing was dismayed by what he saw as the general slovenliness of rural America, where pigs and poultry were allowed to roam free, "bare and bald" houses were thrown up, and trees were planted haphazardly, if at all. (The first practice, he ...