Garden Windows at www.japanese-home-gardens.com

FROM INDOORS, the view through the windows into the garden windows is at least as important as the view from any vantage point outside. Your garden windows design must therefore include views that look tempting from inside, from the rooms where you spend most time. If you are lucky enough to look out over open rural views or a fine cityscape, make sure the garden windows design blends with the background. A rustic garden windows-style design is much more suitable for a rural area than a modern design, in the same way as a modern design will look better in an urban area.

They give a sense of containment, intimacy and privacy and offer opportunity for decorative treatment. Just as the room walls are pierced by doors and windows, so the boundaries of your garden windows may have gaps that provide vistas to interesting views beyond and inviting gateways and paths that are doors leading from the garden windows.

This must be done in such a way that one is not too aware of the intent. Background plantings of trees and shrubs, as well as walls and fences must seem to belong, to be part of the picture, to have purpose. They should be married to the earth and to buildings and other features so that unity is achieved. Don't screen out favorable views from the garden windows. Preserve them, frame them with appropriate planting, use them as focal points. These are "windows" through which you look from your garden windows to the outside world.