#18 –What was “The Grand Tour” that Henry Shaw took during his lifetime?

Stop at Victorian Garden / photo of the parterre

Sheffield-native Henry Shaw called St. Louis home, but throughout his life he remained a proper Englishman at heart. In the 19th century, no English gentleman’s education was considered complete until he had made “The Grand Tour,” an extended trip intended to expose one to the arts, languages and cultures of Europe’s great civilizations. Upon his retirement, Shaw set out on such a trip, leaving his business interests in St. Louis to the care of his younger sister, Caroline. Throughout the 1840s, Mr. Shaw made several extended trips abroad, staying in Europe for as long as three years at a time.

In 1851, on his final venture, he set out for London and the first World’s Fair. He visited the fair’s Crystal Palace Exhibition and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, as well as the beautiful gardens at Chatsworth in Derbyshire, among the finest in the world. Shaw was inspired. During a walk through the Chatsworth gardens, he conceived the idea to create a garden of his own in St. Louis, his adopted home. Henry Shaw dedicated the rest of his life to the development of the Garden for study and preservation of plant knowledge and enjoyment of the people of St. Louis.

This garden recalls the style and feel of the original formal garden, called a parterre, that was located where the reflecting pools in front of the Climatron are today.