‘A gardener should avail himself of objects, perhaps not very striking, if they serve to connect ideas that convey reflexions of a pleasing kind.’ W. Shenstone.

William Shenstone (1714 – 1763), an English poet and one of the earliest practitioners of landscape gardening, sought to transform an unremarkable dairy farm in Shropshire – Leasowes – into an extended “garden of picturesque contemplation,” a garden still characterized by apparent simplicity and an uncompromising rural appearance. Shenstone designed Leasowes to embody the pastoral, a poetic conceit and genre, in landscape garden form. Through both the careful arrangement of vistas and the use of inscription (quotations taken largely from Virgil and other Classical authors as well as Shenstone’s own writing), he incarnated scenes evoked by the pastoral poetry of the Classical past. Shenstone’s main delight in the garden was its potential for allusion and the association of ideas, its appeal to the imagination, and its promotion of unhurried far-flung thought. The watering can’s inscription (from Shenstone’s Unconnected Thoughts on Gardening) enjoins “connect[ing] ideas” and “reflexion.” Shenstone’s insistence on involving the mind in the exploration of the garden – his emphasis on ideas – makes Leasowes a precursor to Finlay’s Little Sparta. But, where Shenstone sought to evoke the Pastoral, Finlay’s ultimate aim is to conjure the Sublime. The watering can, although a “not very striking” object, may nourish strong thought.