Using screens both to hide and to enhance

Certain plants prove to be very effective screens, especially when planted on rising ground.

In this project, bamboos were planted in areas where it was necessary to lift up the eye, and as a means of providing a gentle merging of the middle distance foliage with the trees and the distant hills.

The variety used (Semiarundinaria fastuosa) grows to 6 metres (20 feet) high and can thus be used (as it was here) to hide particular features in the immediate background, such as neighbouring properties (see the house within the red box in the lower photograph).

The New Zealand tree fern Dicksonia Antartica has light green leaves and has been used here with good effect to inject colour in the dark foliage of the oaks lining the lake.

The colour contrast draws the eye from the foreground, across the lake, and into the middle distance.