Garden designers have a trick for making the most of the views in your garden: They borrow scenery from the neighbors -- or from the nature and architecture around you.

Borrowing a view means taking full advantage of the backdrops outside the boundaries of your own property and making them yours by framing them in your landscape design. The idea isn't new -- it comes from old Chinese and Japanese design principles. European and American garden designers adopted the idea eagerly; prospects in the great garden at Versailles, designed by Le Notre in the 18th century, embrace the countryside beyond the fabulous estate outside Paris.

Modern garden designers rely on borrowed views to this day. "Absolutely. Borrowed views are everything," says Matthew Cunningham, a landscape architect and principle of Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design in the Boston area. "For us," he says, "looking at the context of the site means looking outside the property lines, to see what elements or features we can pull in as part of the garden."

Cunningham has done this most spectacularly at a garden on the coast of Maine, where a small stone patio at the edge of a property on Mount Desert Island provides a contemplative spot for taking in the dramatic water view. The patio unites the garden and the view. But you don't have to live next to the ocean -- or mountains, woods, meadows or marshes -- to grab a dazzling bit of scenery. In another client's garden, the master bathroom skylight was placed to give the owners a view of the graceful branches of a large oak tree near the house. "You never think of the sky as being a vista," Cunningham says, "but it is."

Trying to discover the potential of borrowed views is "one of the first things we do when we first start working on a project with a client," Cunningham says. The good views, and the bad views (which can be screened), are taken into consideration all through the planning process.

It often takes a practiced eye to discover the untapped potential of neighborhood scenes. Colleen Hamilton, a garden designer and owner of Bloomin' Landscape Designs in Carmichael, California, says a client she worked with disliked the Italian cypresses her neighbors had planted and wanted to screen them out. Instead, Hamilton framed the view of the stately stand of cypresses, developing her client's garden with an Italian theme that was reinforced by the borrowed view.

"We added a statue and an arbor, and with the cypress in the background, it was a fantastic view," she says. "Without that, it wouldn't be the same." The client was thrilled.

Water, trees and architectural elements can all be part of dramatic and beautiful borrowed views, Hamilton says. A mature tree not on your property but shading it gracefully gives even a new garden instant aristocracy. In areas where shared green space is part of a suburban landscape, wrought iron fences instead of board fences allow you to visually extend the perspectives from your property, making even a small garden seem larger. "Use every possible view, and make it something special," Hamilton says.

Susan Cohan, a garden designer and owner of Susan Cohan Gardens in Chatham Township, New Jersey, says she uses borrowed views to give her clients "more than they expected." Borrowing views "is the first thing they teach design students," she says. "You want to look for the views you can use, whether it is to steal them, create them or augment them." Study your property from every angle, she suggests, so you don't miss a chance. Walk around, of course, but sit down, too, in the spot where you are considering placing a patio, a fire pit or even just a garden bench. Study garden views from inside the house, too.

"It doesn't have to be something grand or long," Cohan says. One of her clients made the most of the wall of a neighbor's garage, painting it to complement her own garden. "Borrow that," Cohan says, "but ask permission, of course."

Cohan also suggests using mirrors to create unexpected new views of your own pretty garden. A mirror mounted in an old window frame and hung on a fence will appear to show a landscape beyond your garden, even though it actually reflects the beauty within.

Cohan admits that her own fantasy view, "a castle on a hill in the south of France," may be unrealistic, but it helps remind her to keep her eyes open for opportunities. If you let your property lines also mark the boundaries of your imagination, you might miss something great.

SOURCES

-- Matthew Cunningham, Matthew Cunningham Landscape Design, matthew-cunningham.com

-- Colleen Hamilton, Bloomin' Landscape Designs, bloominlandscapedesigns.com

-- Susan Cohan, Susan Cohan Gardens, susancohangardens.com

-- To find a garden designer in your area, check the web site of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers, apld.org

(For editorial questions, please contact Clint Hooker at chooker@amuniversal.com.)

There's something about a circle: They're a perfect fit in any garden.

Garden designers turn to circles to define spaces, frame views and break up the sharp lines of a garden. They change the usual geometry of a space and your experience of it. Circles are approachable, restful, cozy, embracing. Squares and rectangles are formal and businesslike; circles have no sharp points and are graciously accommodating.

Carving a circle into the design of a garden is surprisingly easy. With a stake and string, you can quickly trace out a circle of any size for a lawn, a flower bed or a patio. Then define it any way you wish. Kristopher Dabner, a garden designer in Kansas City, Missouri, sometimes uses several circles of different sizes in a single landscape, arranged in great overlapping arcs out from the door opening onto the garden. The first circle might be a brick or stone patio; the second, perhaps a step down in the landscape or a round sweep of lawn; and yet another, just to one side, might define a seating area around a fire pit. The shapes create movement, compelling you to step deeper into the garden from one circle to the next.

People have been fascinated by circles forever. The monumental ring of stones at Stonehenge, in England, may be 5,000 years old. The modern use of circles in gardens is also well-rooted in American garden design and history. The Danish landscape architect Jens Jensen, who settled in Chicago in the late 19th century and became one of the pioneers of the Prairie School of design, incorporated "council circles" in his gardens. A ring of low stone seating was a perfect spot from which to contemplate the natural world, Jensen felt.

Circles are democratic, Jensen said. Sitting in a circle, "there is no social caste," he said. "All are on the same level, looking each other in the face. A ring speaks of strength and friendship and is one of the great symbols of mankind," he wrote in his thoughtful book, "Siftings" (first published in 1939). The mythical King Arthur must have been thinking along the same lines with his famous Round Table of knights.

Council circles -- and story circles, as Jensen called them when they were in a school or a playground -- still have a place in gardens today. When the Chicago Botanic Garden added its spectacular, naturalistic Evening Island landscape, a council ring of stones was built at the highest point in the plan.

You don't have to have a council ring to experience the soothing magic of circles in a garden. Keep an eye out for the circles in nature: They are there in the shape of lily pads, in tree rings, in spiderwebs. The face of a sunflower is a magnificent sunny circle, and a dandelion seed head goes even further: It is a lovely gossamer sphere. The splash of a single raindrop in a puddle generates a mesmerizing pattern of concentric circles. A round birdbath on a pedestal captures the Zen of the circle in a brilliant disc reflecting the dome of the sky.

Dabner uses circles in playful ways, too. In one client's garden, he laid out a brick pathway punctuated with antique grinding wheels of different sizes. In a pond, he added a bubbling orb and floated glass globes on the surface of the water.

Circles fit easily into gardens of every style. Margie Grace, a garden designer in Santa Barbara, California, used bricks to define circles in a Spanish-inspired garden, with a decorative tile mosaic in the center of each. Agave plants grow in the middle of another brick circle.

Circles can be lifted up into the vertical plane, too. A landscape architect in Richmond, Virginia, designed a formal garden with a rectangular patio for one of his clients, but the garden is first revealed to visitors through a gate with a large round opening -- a moon gate. The circular frame around this glimpse of the garden imparts mystery and intimacy, coloring the whole experience of the garden. Partway along a brick path to the patio, a circular gathering space is defined by neatly trimmed balls of boxwood, echoing the circular motif.

Like the face of the moon, circles in a garden are soothing and compelling. The patterns they create may be playful or profound, and they're always just right.

(For editorial questions, please contact Clint Hooker at chooker@amuniversal.com.)

Alliums burst into glorious spheres of bloom in late spring, as jaunty and debonair as the season. Fall is the time to plant them by the dozens.

Alliums are flashy blooms by any measure. Their globe-shaped flower heads, covered with an uncountable number of tiny star-shaped blossoms, have tremendous impact in a garden.

"They really add an exclamation point," says Christian Harper, a horticulturist at Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison, Wisconsin, who has been planting alliums in Olbrich's flowerbeds for more than 20 years. "There is just something about those globes from a distance," he says, "they appear to be floating, and they really pop."

The allium family of ornamental onions is dominated by great big blooms. Mail-order specialists offer the widest variety, with a dozen or more different types in some catalogs. Garden shops often have a good selection of several different alliums, usually including Globemaster, the biggest of them all, which has 10-inch purple globes of sparkling flowers on stems up to three feet tall. Globemaster's flowers last for a couple of glorious weeks in the garden. After they bloom, the sturdy flower heads remain decorative for months -- at this point, they're tawny, not purple, but there's simply nothing else in the garden world quite like these big round balls, and they hold their own while the roses and daylilies come along.

Besides Globemaster, there are purple alliums with somewhat smaller orbs of blooms, white-flowering alliums, alliums with looser heads of pink flowers, and sunny yellow alliums only about 10 inches tall. Garden designers prize them all for their great beauty and for their ability to bridge the season. Like a burst of fireworks at the end of spring, alliums lead the parade of summer flowers like a tall drum major at the head of a marching band. The earliest-blooming types loom above spring's last tulips, and the latest to bloom open with the roses.

Have fun with them. "I have a favorite, and it is Allium schubertii," says Barbara Katz, a garden designer in Washington, D.C. "It's like a constellation." Allium schubertii is an atypical allium, growing on stems only about 18 inches tall. The globe of blooms, on the other hand, is about 12 inches in diameter. Individual flower stems are of several different lengths: The effect is distinctly starlike, twinkling madly.

Katz also plants "a ton of Purple Sensation" alliums in her own and clients' gardens. The dark purple blooms stand about 30 inches tall. "I mix it with hostas, and it looks like the hostas are flowering," Katz says. "I plant it around hydrangeas. It's fun."

Katz and other designers purposely plant alliums among perennial flowers and shrubs because the strappy allium foliage is usually fading when its flowers come into bloom. A lively garden covers up the tired leaves, so you can admire the spectacular flowers all the better.

Purple Sensation allium is well-known for more than its great flowers: Among tall purple alliums, it is the greatest bargain. You can buy 25 bulbs for less than $20. Globemaster bulbs often cost $5 or more apiece. Ambassador, a tall purple allium with flower heads about six inches in diameter, is another expensive one, with bulbs at about $6 apiece.

They're all worth the investment. Alliums are known for their ability to persist in a garden for years. "They're easy and long-living, almost like perennial plants," says Jacqueline van der Kloet, a Dutch garden designer whose deft hand with flower bulbs and perennials has led to international garden projects, including some at Battery Park in New York City and Millennium Park in Chicago. (Both are collaborations with the naturalistic Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf.)

Van der Kloet included Purple Sensation and the drumstick allium, A. sphaerocephalon in her bulb plantings at the Lurie garden in Chicago. She especially loves the smaller alliums, including the white-blooming bride's onion (A. neapolitanum), which is sometimes used in bridal bouquets. Good plants to include with all alliums are "plants that are rather modest," she says, "so the alliums will add just that touch of extra that makes the combination perfect." She suggests planting them with ornamental grasses, gaura, lavenders, catmint and cranesbill geraniums.

To take full advantage of the whole allium season, plant species and varieties that will bloom over a long time. Plant them in clusters of three or five bulbs, scattered here and there in flower beds. Planted this way, "it really looks like quite a lot is going on," says Christian Curless of Colorblends, a mail-order bulb specialty company that offers 11 different alliums in its catalog. Curless says that he, like many garden designers, "think of alliums as a little bit 'in-between season' plants," but it's time to change that. They create a season all their own, and share it graciously.

SIDEBAR

ALLIUMS IN ORDER

Fall is the time to plant alliums. If you plant both early- and late-blooming varieties, the season will last for weeks, from late spring through early summer. Some are so inexpensive that you can plant them by the dozen. More expensive alliums tend to be the largest-flowering types: Try three or five together, and prepare to stand back and watch the show when they bloom. Deer and rabbits do not like them. Here are some suggestions from bulb experts.

-- Christian Curless, of Colorblends, the mail-order bulb specialists, says the earliest allium in his catalog is Purple Sensation, which blooms "on the heels of tulips." Next up is Gladiator, which grows 40 inches tall, followed by the white-flowering Mount Everest, then Globemaster. "Nothing else in our catalog blooms as long as Globemaster," he says. The flowers are sterile, which may explain the long duration of bloom. Ambassador is one of the latest tall alliums to bloom. Its season overlaps with pink Knock Out roses.

-- Barbara Katz, a garden designer and owner of London Landscapes in the Washington, D.C., metro area, loves Allium schubertii, Purple Sensation and Gladiator. Globemaster, she says, "is almost over the top." She also recommends White Giant, with white globes of bloom, and drumstick allium, A. spaerocephalon, which blooms in early summer. Katz plants alliums in odd-numbered groups in a garden, buying a dozen or so bulbs. "With 25 alliums, you can make a very strong statement," she says.

-- Dutch designer Jacqueline van der Kloet, who has introduced fresh bulb combinations to the traditional world of Keukenhoff in Holland and to great public gardens around the world, likes Allium zebdanense, a tiny allium that blooms in very early spring, and the bridal onion, A. neapolitanum, which blooms in early May in her own garden. Her favorites to grow in mixed perennial gardens are Allium christophii, A. schubertii, A. atropurpureum and the drumstick allium. She also likes the new allium Summer Drummer, which grows up to seven feet tall and blooms in summer, with two-tone purple-and-white flowers on a round flower head the size of a big baseball.

SOURCES

-- Colorblends, www.colorblends.com

-- Brent and Becky's Bulbs, www.brentandbeckysbulbs.com

-- Van Engelen, www.vanengelen.com

(For editorial questions, please contact Clint Hooker at chooker@amuniversal.com.)