Give your garden a lift with a trellis. They're versatile, vertical plant supports with lots of sculptural appeal. Even in the tiniest garden, you can find a place for a trellis.

When you put up a trellis, you're also adding an eye-catching architectural element to the garden. Besides providing a blank canvas for brilliant displays of bloom, trellises are extremely functional. A trellis will instantly block undesirable views, such as the view of the compost heap from a patio. A simple panel trellis -- painted, stained or weathered to a silvery gray -- might serve as a privacy screen between your house and the neighbors'. Trellises mounted on the house or on the side of the garage break up an expanse of wall and give it more definition, echoing the geometry of a window, for example, or creating a sense of depth to make a small garden seem a little larger. Trellises look pretty on either side of a garden gate or by a patio. They're perfect along a porch rail.

Trellises are real space savers, too. If you're running out of places for plants, you can grow roses, clematis, peas, beans and many other climbing plants on trellises; they have a very small footprint but make room for flowers or an impressive harvest of fresh vegetables.

In vegetable gardens, trellises can be extended along the length of a bed for peas or cucumbers, and they hardly take up any room at all. Just be sure you position them in such a way that they do not rob the rest of the bed of its sunlight.

For centuries, garden designers have employed trellises to create fanciful and useful accents up against garden walls, and to help define garden rooms. All trellises naturally create gentle boundaries -- see-through walls that introduce veils of color and texture. Sometimes they're meant to stand on their own, without any plants on them.

In the 16th century, willow whips and trimmed shoots from fruit and nut trees provided excellent pliable trellis material, and they remain highly serviceable to this day, especially for rustic pieces. Bamboo poles make tremendously sturdy trellises. If you're looking for a great garden project, lots of trellis plans and supplies are available on the bookracks and in the regular aisles at builders supply stores. And you'll find all kinds of ready-made trellises at garden shops, too, made of wood and metal, and in colors as bright as any garden.

Trellising can mirror the architecture of almost any house style. Bentwood trellises seem perfect for bungalows and cottages. More sharply angular trellises lend themselves naturally to the Craftsman style. Slim trellis panels fit into tight spaces, which makes them suitable for Federal style facades and backyards and patios. Georgian and Palladian styles call for arched trellises.

In a large garden, you can put several panels of trellis together to form a backdrop for larger plants. It's the same effect as a wood fence, but more discreet and friendlier. Unlike a hedge of junipers or hornbeams, a trellis needs no watering or pruning, and will never outgrow its spot.

In tiny gardens, trellises almost have to be part of the garden plan. Even a window box has room for a little trellis and would look wonderful with annual black-eyed Susan vines twining up it. On a south-facing balcony, a series of trellises in deck-rail planters would offer a lot of protection from the hot summer sun. On a small patio, you can put a trellis in a large flowerpot, plant it with cucumbers or cherry tomatoes, and pick your own salads all summer long. Almost any cascading plant, including petunias, nasturtiums or licorice plant, could be trained up a trellis instead of being allowed to tumble freely.

Trellises are low-cost, high-impact garden solutions, handsome as soon as you put them up. This might be the year to give them a try.

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

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.)