Subscribe Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart   Support The Daily Gardener Buy Me A Coffee    Connect for FREE! The Friday Newsletter |  Daily Gardener Community   Historical Events 1714 Birth of William Shenstone, English poet, and landscape gardener. In the early 1740s, Shenstone inherited his family's dairy farm, which he transformed into the Leasowes (pronounced 'lezzoes'). The transfer of ownership lit a fire under Shenstone, and he immediately started changing the land into a wild landscape - something he referred to as an ornamented farm. Shenstone wisely bucked the trend of his time, which called for formal garden design (he didn't have the money to do that anyway.) Yet, what Shenstone accomplished was quite extraordinary. His picturesque natural landscape included water features like cascades and pools and structures like temples and ruins. What I love most about Shenstone is that he was a consummate host. He considered the garden's comfort and perspective from his visitors' standpoint. When he created a walk around his estate, Shenstone wanted to control the experience. So, Shenstone added seating every so often along the path to cause folks to stop and admire the views that Shenstone found it most appealing. Then, he incorporated signage with beautiful classical verses and poems, even adding some of his own - which elevated the Leasowes experience for his guests. After his death, his garden, the Leasowes, became a popular destination - attracting the likes of William Pitt, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. It was William Shenstone who said, Grandeur and beauty are so very opposite, that you often diminish the one as you increase the other. Variety is most akin to the latter, simplicity to the former.   1806 Birth of Charles Leo Lesquereux, Swiss botanist. Leo was born with a naturalist's heart. A self-described dreamer, Leo loved going out into the forest, collecting all kinds of flowers and specimens for his mother. Sadly, when Leo was seven years old, he fell off the top of a mountain. He was carried back to his home completely unconscious, with multiple injuries to his body and head trauma. He remained motionless and unconscious for two weeks. His survival was a miracle, yet the fall resulted in hearing loss that would eventually leave Leo utterly deaf by the time he was a young man. Despite the fall, nature still ruled Leo's heart. As Leo matured, he tried to provide for his family as a watchmaker. But, he found himself returning again and again to the outdoors. Eventually, Leo began to focus his efforts on peat bogs, and his early work protecting peat bogs attracted the attention of Louis Agassiz of Harvard, who invited Leo to bring his family to America. When he arrived, Leo classified the plants that Agassiz had discovered on his expedition to Lake Superior. Then, on Christmas Eve, 1848, Asa Gray summoned Leo to help William Starling Sullivant. Asa  predicted the collaboration would be successful, and he wrote to his friend and fellow botanist John Torrey: They will do up bryology at a great rate. Lesquereux says that the collection and library of Sullivant in muscology are magnifique, superbe,and the best he ever saw. So, Leo packed up his family, traveled to Columbus, Ohio, and settled near the bryologist, William Starling Sullivant. Bryology is the study of mosses. The root, bryos, is a Greek verb meaning to swell and is the etymology of the word embryo. Bryology will be easier to remember if you think of the ability of moss to expand as it takes on water. Mosses suited Leo and Sullivant's strengths. They require patience and close observation, scrupulous accuracy, and discrimination. Together, Leo and Sullivant wrote the book on American mosses. Sullivant funded the endeavor and generously allowed Leo to share in the proceeds. In 1873, Sullivant contracted pneumonia - ironically, an illness where your lungs fill or swell with fluid - and died on April 30, 1873. Leo lived for another 16