In 1850 President Millard Fillmore asked
Andrew Jackson Downing, the nation's preeminent landscape gardener and advocate of a rural American style, to design the landscaping for the largely undeveloped National Mall and
Smithsonian grounds.
Downing’s plan 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
Capitol to the
Washington Monument and using flora and fauna indigenous to the US, created a
public museum of living trees and shrubs. Congress failed to allocate funds, however, and Downing’s plan never materialized.