Andrew Jackson Downing creates a landscape plan for the Mall In 1850 President Millard Fillmore asked <a href="http://mallhistory.org/items/show/84">Andrew Jackson Downing</a>, the nation's preeminent landscape gardener and advocate of a rural American style, to design the landscaping for the largely undeveloped National Mall and <a href="http://mallhistory.org/items/show/178">Smithsonian grounds</a>. <a href="http://mallhistory.org/items/show/356">Downing’s plan</a> departed from the classic design originally planned for the Mall. A champion of public parks, Downing created a plan which connected four different, but compatible, garden spaces extending from the <a href="http://mallhistory.org/items/show/59">Capitol</a> to the <a href="http://mallhistory.org/items/show/36">Washington Monument</a> and using flora and fauna indigenous to the US, created a <a href="http://mallhistory.org/items/show/261">public museum of living trees and shrubs</a>. Congress failed to allocate funds, however, and Downing’s plan never materialized. Smithsonian Institution Archive. <a href="http://siarchives.si.edu/collections/siris_sic_9232">View original</a>. 1850 <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=38&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1830-1859">1830-1859</a>