Borrowed Mountain
An Old Idea with a Long View · Colorado
Old stone, new curves, and a garden composed around a peak it does not own.
Japanese gardeners have a word, shakkei, for borrowing distant scenery into a garden's composition. You cannot plant a mountain. You can make sure nothing stands in its way. That is the rule this garden lives by. Lawn, walls, and planting all defer to the snowfields on the horizon.
The stone is on its second life. It stood first as straight, static walls in front of the house, stackable farmer stone the clients wanted reused rather than hauled away. Taken down and dry-stacked again, it now runs in serpentine curves behind the house, shaping a set of new garden rooms. The dry stacking keeps faith with the farm and ranch vernacular that leads into the development. The curves are the new part, and the walls stay below hip height so the rooms never close off the horizon.
Out front, new boulder retaining softened the entry, trading engineered lines for something closer to what the mesa would do on its own. The same boulders carry through to the back, so the whole garden reads as one gesture. New planting beds settle in among the walls and give each room its own reason to linger.
The big flat lawn was already here, and it stayed. It is the garden's playing field, open for games and room to run. At its edge we carved out a peony garden and hung a basket swing under a timber pergola, a spot for reading, or for doing nothing at all while the view does the work.
In the evening the peak goes pink, then gray. The swing keeps moving a while after the air cools. The garden takes no credit for the mountain. It just makes sure you are sitting down when the light arrives.
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Escape Garden Design · 312-E Aspen Business Center, Aspen, Colorado 81611 · Voice: 970.920.3700 · Fax: 970.920.9589 · Start a conversation