The borrowed landscape is an old trick. It’s a Chinese concept that takes scenery from the environment around you, so that your garden doesn’t necessarily look bigger, but is enhanced. There were several levels: the distant borrowing of a mountain view or the sea; adjacent borrowing of a lovely roof or a fine bit of architecture; upward borrowing of sky and clouds; or the downward borrowing of rocks and ponds.
The idea of borrowed scenery got quickly adopted into Japanese garden principles and, for that matter, pretty much every other landscape design movement in history. It makes sense to look beyond if there’s something worth looking beyond for. But what if your adjacent borrowing is the neighbour’s pants on the washing line or a wall of ugly yellow bricks?
The obvious answer is that you screen out eyesores, but this comes with challenges. A good screen will ideally be evergreen, and that limits choice. A mature evergreen hedge of yew, box or holly will be expensive, and requires a lot of love to make sure it settles in well. You also need to stay the right side of laws concerning how high an evergreen or semi-evergreen hedge can grow (no more than 2m). Fast-growing specimens such as leylandii are ugly and often regrettable.
Above all else, a hedge or large tree in a small garden takes up space, creates shade and competes with other plants. Still, these downsides may be paltry compared with your existing view. Large shrubs can be an excellent substitute for a tree. Japanese pittosporum, P. tobira, has headily scented flowers and glossy, green leaves year round. Osmanthus are much underused for screening: the spring flowering O. delavayi is easy to get hold of, but O. x fortunei and O. heterophyllus are worth looking out for; they both produce scented flowers in autumn, but are rather slow-growing, so buy large specimens.
Another solution is a semi-evergreen rose such as Rosa mulliganii (good for shade), R. banksiae (for very sheltered gardens only), R. ‘Adélaïde d’Orléans’ (lovely scent) or R. ‘Félicité Perpétue’. These ramblers need a trellis or screen to grow up, or they will flop.
If there’s no room to screen out, then distract. The pond is a good example: if it’s beautifully done, your eye will be drawn to it before any ugly view. Likewise, plant mid-height perennials and biennials, grasses, foxgloves, Verbena bonariensis and climbers up tripods that sit around eye height and your gaze will drift towards them. Type 3 herbaceous climbers are easiest; chop them back in early spring and – boom – up they go again. Consider Clematis integrifolia ‘Alba’ (the flowers are heavenly scented), C. ‘Fascination’ (nodding, dusky purple flowers) or C. ‘Arabella’ (a more open, blue-purple flower).
Biologically, we are fascinated by the middle distance and by natural things. We are attracted to nature on a deeply evolutionary basis; you don’t want to look at an ugly wall, so put a beautiful bit of nature in front and your subconscious will take your eyes there by habit.
