Something Borrowed

The landscaping plan for a new site in Christchurch took advantage of established neighbouring gardens to create leafy sight lines and a sense of privacy

- Carol Bucknell

When Craig Wilson of Form Garden Architecture admired some mature trees next to a bare section in the Christchurch suburb of Strowan, his first thought was to borrow the view for a garden he was designing for the site.

“It was a bare section down a long right of way,” he says. “The neighbouring sections had some established trees which I could see would create a lovely backdrop and a ‘borrowed’ landscape that would provide a sense of scale to the two-storey home.”

SITE With the trees’ foliage screening out the neighbouring houses, the 556-square-metre site provided just the right amount of privacy – a quality that Craig’s clients, Walter and Paulette Scott, were after. “We were not interested in being in a new subdivision,” says Paulette. “This section is in a secluded spot at the end of a long driveway which is shared by five other homes. We have two boundaries which look out onto large, established gardens with large trees, the houses of each being some distance back from us, which means we can enjoy the borrowed landscape of our neighbours.”