TITLE: BEYOND FASION, MORE THAN SCHOLARSHIP: THE CASE FOR THE SENSES. ABSTRACT: The origins of how we understand garden design as an art begin shortly before Henry Hoare I bought Stourton manor in 1717. Joseph Addison published his influential essay ‘The Pleasures of the Imagination’ in 1712. Addison held up the apparently natural appearance of Chinese designed landscapes as offering insights into the subjective sensations of aesthetic experience: their impact on the senses. The feelings that arise from experiencing the gardens are the foundation of aesthetic understanding. Addison is thus suggesting that the contexts of art are less important than the viewer’s feelings, led by their sensory responses, in allowing the viewer to come to a considered judgement about art. This philosophical problem of how we make judgements about art was developed later in the eighteenth century as a problem of aesthetics. The gardens at Stourhead represent phases of aesthetic practice in English landscapes. By 1770, Horace Walpole could reflect on the design achievements of English gardens (including Stourhead) as on a par with poetry and painting, the ‘sister arts’. I will discuss why generation of wealthy English families were caught up in making art through gardens, and suggest that it is the importance attached to how judgements about art were made that allowed many owners to participate in remaking their green environments.