Borrowed Scenery in the Landscape

Designing your garden can be much easier when you have borrowed scenery to your advantage. Borrowed scenery is defined as "incorporating background landscape into the composition of a garden." If a yard abuts a beautiful wild flower field, a lush forest or a neighbors well groomed yard, that borrowed scenery can be used to build upon in the adjoining gardens design. The practice, later named Shekkei, began in Japan as early as 794 AD. Today it is a practical and favored tool of the well planned garden.

For example, a common design element on smaller lots in modern gardens is using screening plants to create a living fence. This allows the neighboring garden to use shorter plantings and incorporate that living fence into their own garden. If a yard that borders another has mature trees, a designer can certainly borrow that element and plant so the view of them isn't obstructed. And of course beautiful, often even distant scenery such as mountains or water are borrowed scenery that should always be integrated into a landscape design.

Borrowed views actually make designing easier and can even be the focal point of the garden as a whole. Regardless of the scenery, borrowed landscapes should be thoughtfully linked with the foreground landscape for a natural and cohesive feel.