If you live in an urban environment and enjoy the usual view (e.g. busy road, car park, or the back of an office block) then you might yearn for something more natural and appealing to look at instead. To achieve this a window box would be affixed outside the window and contain sufficient plants, etc to obscure the normal view and replace it with a manicured parkland. It would be designed to give you the illusion of looking out of the window into a park or woodland.
This differs from your normal window box containing regular plants, as the miniature landscape would be planted with a variety of bonsai trees, shrubs and moss 'lawns'. You could incorporate a selection of miniature park-type ornamental sculptures, lamps, etc. for a more convincing distance effect. It can be banked at the rear to give a more layered effect with the trees - this creates a greater depth of field and adds to the illusion.
Using specific trees & accessories you could create famous public gardens or landscapes e.g. Hyde Park or the Amazon rainforest. The boxes could come as pre-designed templates or scuplt-your-own. Water features and small fish could also be included to give you something else to watch.
I'm definitely going to create one of these when I have a flat in town - at the moment I look out onto my garden with nothing but lawn & trees to see and would hate to give that up!-- Texbinder, Jan 16 2006 Pengjing Landscape Bonsai http://www.venuscomm.com/Pengjing Landscape Bonsai page [Texbinder, Jan 16 2006] Saikei page http://www.absbonsa...rticles/Saikei.htmlAmerican Bonsai Society page on Saikei [Texbinder, Jan 16 2006] Aha, I didn't know there was another term for it. I stand corrected [UnaBubba].From the descriptions, I'd say this was closer to Landscape Penjing (shanshui penjing) as Saikei seems more about getting the trees right, whereas Penjing is concerned with the overall effect, which is what I was after.-- Texbinder, Jan 16 2006 At its simplest, this could just be a window box with wildly angled sides to simulate perspective. Lovely idea. Bun.-- moomintroll, Jan 16 2006 ...with smaller plants at the back - a 'false perspective' effect.-- hippo, Jan 16 2006 [Murdoch] - it's not designed to 'fool' anyone with binocular vision (or even monocular vision), just replace an ugly urban scene with something more pleasing to the eye. Think of it as changing the view out the window in your peripheral vision from a road to a park. Father Ted reference was good though!
[UnaBubba] - I agree it wouldn't be easy to achieve, more a task for someone with time on their hands, and I wouldn't claim to stick to any particular discipline when making one.-- Texbinder, Jan 17 2006 It could be invaded by miniature bulldozers to clear it for sapce to build a new washing machine factory-- xenzag, Jan 17 2006 random, halfbakery