You will often hear eminent landscape designers talking loftily about ‘the borrowed landscape’. It is one of the most basic elements of good landscape design and yet not often fully understood. I first heard the term at Burnley in my first year of the diploma course. I was lucky to have John Patrick as my lecturer (fresh from the UK) long before he had his own landscape practice and long before Gardening Australia! I seem to remember John was big on the borrowed landscape and the concept has stuck with me ever since. 

Basically the borrowed landscape is everything you can see that is OUTSIDE your garden i.e. beyond the garden fence. On one hand this might be houses, roads, unsightly views etc that you want to obscure; on the other hand it might be trees, hills, views etc that you want to incorporate into your garden. You might hear garden designers talking about ‘bringing the garden into the house’; this is like bringing the outside into your garden! 

John Patrick was fond of talking about Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown an eighteenth century English landscape architect who was fond of a naturalistic garden style. Mr Brown would replace an ordinary boundary fence with a hidden fence (called a ha-ha) so the view beyond the garden was not checked and one had the illusion that the garden went on forever. This was a very clever use of the borrowed landscape; Mr Brown ‘borrowed’ the views beyond the garden fence and made them part of the garden. 

Use of the borrowed landscape occurred quite unintentionally in my garden. Being a newish area, as my garden grew, so did the neighbour’s gardens. Division between properties consists of post and wire fences and they have been hidden amidst the vegetation. Along my northern boundary in particular, you cannot see the fence at all and it looks like the trees next door (and even two doors down) are all ours. It feels like we have a really big garden and we are ‘in the bush’ yet we are almost in the centre of town. 

If there is a particular item in the borrowed landscape you wish to draw the eye to (like a mountain, church steeple or significant tree) consider framing the object with a structure (like columns or a pergola) or a planting (trees on either side) to make it stand out. I have also seen a hole cut in a hedge or a wall put to good effect when there was something to see on the other side! 

On a new block of land, too many people rush to plant their perimeter with trees to ‘screen their neighbours’. Before they know it they are enclosed in a square of green (which is fine if you suffer from agoraphobia) but often they have not considered enticing glimpses of the landscape beyond the garden. Look before you plant! 

The Japanese are masters in the use of the borrowed landscape. In Japan it is called shakkei (sha-kay) and the following directions came from a website called Gardening Life.

1. Choose the feature or aspect of the surrounding landscape you want to focus on.
2. Determine where the best view of it will be so you can create a vantage point within the garden—perhaps a sitting area or a widening in the pathway.
3. Frame the feature (and mask out any undesirable parts of the view), using trees, shrubs, fences, screens or walls.
4. Complement and enhance the borrowed feature by using elements that echo it in either material, form or colour. For example, if a cliff is in the distance, use some craggy rocks in the foreground; if rolling hills are the focus, trim a hedge to echo their shape; if the neighbour’s pink-flowering apple tree is framed, plant some smaller shrubs with pink flowers that bloom at the same time. These echoes will draw the eye and make the connection to the borrowed view.

Useful Links  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Brown http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-ha http://www.gardeningtipsnideas.com/2006/08/the_borrowed_landscape.html http://www.gardeninglife.ca/articles/article/designing-japanese-shakkei/