The Leasowes 3.45

The Leasowes is a 57-hectare (around 141 acre) estate in Halesowen, historically in the county of Shropshire, England, comprising house and gardens. The parkland is now listed Grade I on English Heritage's Register of Parks and Gardens and the home of the Halesowen Golf Club. The name means "rough pasture land".Shenstone (1743 to 1763)Developed between 1743 and 1763 by poet William Shenstone as a ferme ornée, the garden is one of the most admired early examples of the English garden. Its importance lies in its simplicity and the uncompromisingly rural appearance. Thomas Whately praises it in chapter LII of his Observations on Modern Gardening of 1770:Horne (1763 to 1789)Shenstone died in 1763. The house and grounds were purchased by Edward Horne, who demolished Shenstone's house and built a new one on the same site completing it around 1776. He also built a walled garden and a hothouse.Visit of Adams and JeffersonWith Whately's treatise guiding him every step of the way, in April 1786, polymath Thomas Jefferson, the future third President of the United States, visited the Leasowes (then owned by Edward Horne) on his tour of English gardens in the company of his close friend and future second President of the USA, John Adams.