As a result, he later published a comprehensive garden guide entitled Skeleton Tours (1870), which included the British Isles, the Scandinavian Peninsula, Russia, Poland, and Spain.

Sargent's most important literary contribution is his supplement to the sixth (1859) and subsequent editions of Downing's A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1841).

In this he gave an account of the newer deciduous and evergreen plants and told in considerable detail of the development of his own "Wodenethe" and of the estate of his relative, Horatio Hollis Hunnewell, in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

In a period which marks the beginning of the professional practice of landscape architecture in the United States, this book and its supplement exerted a great influence on popular taste.

[1] There were three children of this marriage, two of whom predeceased their father, including:[9] Sargent died on November 11, 1882, and was buried at St. Luke's Church Cemetery in Beacon, New York.