'This Peaceful Shade'
THE GARDEN OF WILLIAM SHENSTONE
William Shenstone was an important literary figure in the eighteenth century.
He was a poet, essayist, correspondent and a landscape gardener who turned a pasture farm into a celebrated landscape garden.
On 11 February 1763, at the age of 49, William Shenstone died from putrid fever – probably what we would call typhus fever – in his home at The Leasowes, Halesowen, Worcestershire. He was buried in the churchyard of St John the Baptist, the parish church of Halesowen, on 15 February. Shenstone left a legacy through his poetry, essays and correspondence, but most of all in his landscape gardening.
Although The Leasowes started out as a pasture farm he turned it into a celebrated garden. Shenstone’s ferme ornée,or ornamented farm, became nationally and internationally famous as one of the landscapes garden lovers were delighted to see and many to copy.
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