Autumn is the season of the view. Folks travel great distances to see the flame of New England’s trees. Even though Connecticut’s brim with their own vibrancy — with scarlet swamp maples and orange sugars, the yellow flames of birch, bronzed oaks, golden hazels, coppery pears – we, too, make the annual pilgrimage through the Mohawk Trail, returning across southern Vermont, solely to concentrate on the colors.

Anyone who has a lovely view from their house is very fortunate. One of my friends could see clear to the shore from her property. Another shares her exquisite photographs with us of sunrise in “the enchanted forest”. Many of Hampton’s summits provide spectacular views, of rolling hills and river-coursed valleys, and many of us have a special place where we can see “forever”.

Many of our homes, however, are hemmed in with natural plants or those we impose on our perimeters, preventing us from appreciating distant vistas, or near ones. Enclosures are necessary in distinguishing the garden, while a view connects us with the surrounding countryside. A balanced landscape design incorporates the two — elements which envelope, and those which open.

A borrowed view is one of a landscape which lies beyond our own. A most important component of Japanese gardens, “shakkei” can encompass a glimpse, or a grand panorama, faraway or close. A few years ago, we cut over thirty trees, old and compromised with weather, which formed a natural barrier between ours and the neighboring property. What a difference to our yard — opening a pool of light and facilitating a breeze and affording a view of a clearing in the woods filled with wildflowers. On a grander scale, the stonewall in front of our property underscores a distant row of trees across acres of fields. By manipulating the viewer’s sight line, we borrow views beyond our boundaries and broaden our yards. Placing a focal point that calls attention to the distance is one way of accomplishing this — a birdhouse on a tall pole in an open expanse draws the eye to itself and to what lies behind it. We can also control the transition from our lawn to the beyond with elements that are sympathetic to both landscapes – trees common to the two properties strategically placed and linking the two realms. This helps camouflage the actual delineation between the separate territories. Framing a view is another way to call attention to it — a glimpse of the countryside between a row of trees, especially essential when the vista is overwhelming and threatens to reduce the visual dimensions of our own yards.

We can also frame views in our own lawns with arbors, pergolas, breaks in the shrubbery, fences, and gates, which always beckon visitors because of the promise of beyond. The arbor that serves as the entrance to one of our gardens frames a beauty berry to the east, and to the west, a Japanese maple. Our wisteria arbor frames a fountain of pink roses from one angle and the horizontal tiers of a viburnum from another. Though our gazebo sits in a garden surrounded with flowers, the exotic foliage of a mimosa is seen through one arch, and a sitting area of white wicker beneath a variegated willow through another. While enclosures such as these are meant to provide privacy, they must always leak at least a glimpse of elsewhere.

Views are essential for the places where we sit, the porch, a terrace or patio. We have views throughout the year from our deck, of ‘Lemon Glow’ daffodils through the golden branches of a shrub dogwood, of sunny pools of evening primrose splashing through the greens of hostas beneath canopies of silvery willows, of the katsura when it bursts into its coral and marmalade flames beyond the scarlet arc of the sourwood. If a view exists in your lawn, provide a place to rest to see it. The way we acquire the furniture in our gardens is happenstance; where we place it is not, and requires comfort in the form of shade and stable terrain, and a beautiful view.

Since splendid vistas are often seasonal, they sometimes surprise us, though once seen they are rarely forgotten. During the flowering year, the approach to our house is through a corridor of gardens; in spring, however, the scene at the end of the driveway – the sulfur spurs of witch hazel, dark red buds of swamp maple, and the pearly catkins of pussy willow, the pale green twigged and the coral barked – supply a riveting spiral of silver, yellow, olive, rust, and orange. In summer our gardens, singularly and as a whole, provide all the views we want, with perennial vignettes vying for attention through leafy windows. At the moment, it’s the confetti of the raspberry asters sweeping over a darkening rim of sedums and across mauve stalks of turtlehead and the dusty rose plumes of moor grass, all speckled with the magenta petals of a few late season phlox; and I can tell from their swell that in another week the wild asters will capture us with their clouds of gentlest blues and purples, falling over the woodland garden like a delicate veil. From April through October I find myself daily identifying “the view” and inviting family and friends to sit where they can appreciate it. Later in fall, it’s layers of foliar frames, a glimpse of the burgundy viburnum through the whiskery tassels of a purpling grass, or the bright red umbrella of the Japanese maple through a wreath of hydrangea’s mauve panicles, or callicarpica’s amethyst berries through the bronzed fronds of mimosa. And in winter, it’s the impact of trees on the landscape. Provide your yard with those that produce berries or interesting bark, or sparkle after an ice storm like the willow’s cascades of diamonds, or hold the dustings of a powdery snow, as pines. The ultimate borrowed view is the sky, and there is none as spectacular as winter’s sun rising or setting through the black brooms of branches.

Though essential in winter, the view from our windows is important throughout the year. The trunk of the birch seen from the kitchen exfoliating rust and cream and buckskin, the mountain laurels reaching across the front windows to flush the panes pale pink, the aerial views of the gardens from upstairs, and especially the window that introduces us every morning to the day: the last of summer’s flowers blooming now on its ledge and the far away trees starting to ignite, and the view of an unblemished sea of snow in distant fields, all the way until we watch winter’s slow leaching and the return of the gray green mists of spring.

Dayna McDermott