From 1745, in response to the current vogue for the ferme ornée (“ornamental farm”; i.e., one that was as picturesque as it was profitable), he devoted his chief energies to beautifying his estate, the Leasowes, by “landscape gardening,” a term he was the first to use. His theories, outlined in “Unconnected Thoughts on Gardening” (1764), involved the creation of winding waterways and walks and a series of picturesque views.

In his poetry Shenstone celebrated rustic virtue and simplicity, foreshadowing the sentiments of the early Romantics. His best-known poem, The School-Mistress (1742), commemorates, in Spenserian stanzas, his first teacher at the village school—Sarah Lloyd. He published miscellaneous odes, elegies, and types of light verse, an index of the poetic fashions of the times. He was influential in reviving the ballad and advised and assisted Bishop Percy in the compilation and editing of Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), the book that conferred literary status on the ballad.