The borrowed landscape is a strong element within Japanese gardens and garden design. This is a feature also used by the English landscape designer Capability Brown. What if the mountain beyond your garden wall could become part of the garden itself? That is the essence of shakkei (借景) — the Japanese principle of borrowed scenery. Shakkei is the deliberate practice of incorporating landscape elements that exist outside a garden’s physical boundaries into the garden’s overall composition, creating a sense of depth, scale, and harmony that transcends the limits of the site. Far from being merely a poetic concept, shakkei is a highly disciplined design and construction technique — and one that remains deeply relevant to contemporary landscape practice worldwide. I don’t know of anywhere that better utilises the borrowed landscape than Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage. Prospect Cottage celebrates the bleak exposure of the shingle beach at Dungeness on the Kent coast.
How to embrace the borrowed landscape.
- Think about the environment beyond your garden borders and identify desirable features. It may be a water feature or a particular flowering tree or shrub.
- Work out how you can enhance and emphasise the view by clearing, cutting and framing the view to the borrowed element.
- Enjoy the view, it may be from your garden or from an upstairs window!