Whichever material is chosen, it’s important to remember that a living fence bridges that space between architecture and garden. “When we’re planning a landscape,” says Eric Groft of Washington, D.C.-based Oehme, van Sweden & Associates, “we start by looking at the architecture of the place, the bones and details, because we want to gracefully transition from house to nature. And then, of course, we choose something that deer aren’t going to eat.”
Abovet: In London’s Hampstead neighborhood, landscape designer Lynne Marcus created an espalier of hornbeams to screen from the road an elegant parterre filled with box-edged beds of daffodils, tulips, and allium with an 100-year-old yew as its centerpiece.
