A.J. Downing

"In Landscape Gardening the country gentleman of leisure finds a resource of the most agreeable nature... In rendering his home more beautiful, he not only contributes to the happiness of his own family, but improves the taste, and adds loveliness to the country at large.  There is, perhaps, something exclusive in the taste for some of the fine arts.  A collection of pictures, for example, is comparatively shut up from the world, in the private gallery.  But the sylvan and floral collections,--the groves and gardens, which surround the country residence of the man of taste, --are confined by no barriers narrower than the blue heaven above and around them."
                              Preface to A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening asdapted to North America with a view to the Improvement of Country Residences, 5th edition 1849