I am guessing that a recent photo here prompted this post.

Whether enclosure warrants a separate entry under principles of design is debatable as the objective is to direct the attention and could come under the unity heading. Something has to impress the viewer that this is it and that is something else in the way that a frame does for a painting. The easiest way to enclose a garden (English sense) is with a fence, hedge or wall and without this unity needs to come from other sources to prevent the eye from wondering from your gazebo and nicely cut out flower bed over flat land to the neighbours rockery and the houses beyond.

Ann Lovejoy is a pretty current landscape/garden writer, and she lists Enclosure as one of maybe 5 fundamental considerations in design. (Don't have the book in front of me, but that's my recollection.)

Enclosure is certainly a 'consideration' in design. And is incredibly useful, especially in smaller spaces. And if well done, in large spaces.

But as in paintings, it depends on what you want the viewer to experience. How are you leading the eye around the canvas, or in this case, the feet and eyes around the living landscape.

Enclosure certainly can be a wall or hedge, or that same principle can be a sharp curve in the path that leads to another area of very different feel. The change can be to another 'room', or can be a sudden view of wide-open vista.

For me, it is the concept that helps me turn two acres of open lawn into a complex place with coves for conversation, relaxing walks among gardens of different feels, places overlooking open areas with comfy benches.

"Enclosure" as a principle, for me, is just how you want people to experience their moves around the landscape. Depends on the property, and is endlessly flexible.

The principle is degree of enclosure. This includes implied enclosure, subtle definition of space, sense of periphery,.....

The word implies solid enclosure to most people, but that is just the extreme at one end of the spectrum with a blank horizon being the extreme at the other. The principle that is present in any and all composition is somewhere in between and therefore ever present.

Very interesting!

thanks!