This is a biography of Andrew Jackson Downing, horticultaralist, landscape gardener, and writer on architecture. It shows how he shaped middle-class taste in the US in the mid-19th century, preaching a gospel that promoted the modern or natural style of landscape design, rather than the formal and geometric styles that were the hallmark of 18th and early-19th-century gardens. Downing contributed to the revolution in American architectural taste, from the universality of the classical revival to Gothic, Italianate, bracketed, and other romantic or picturesque styles - a change seen by Downing himself as a reflection of the nation's evolution from a pioneer condition to a more advanced state of civilization. The text also explores Downing's ideas in English aesthetic theory, and his efforts to "adapt" English designs to the different climate and republican social institutions of the US. An analysis is offered of Downing's influence on the appropriate design of homes and gardens, as well as the complications of class implicit in his prescriptions for American society.