Shady borders round church close lacking a background (7)
I believe the answer is:
scenery
'a background' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'shady borders round' is the wordplay.
'shady' becomes 'scene' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'borders' says to hollow out the word (remove centre letters).
'round' becomes 'roly-poly'.
'rolypoly' with its centre taken out is 'ry'.
'scene'+'ry'='SCENERY'
'church close lacking' acts as a link.
This may not be right. Some or all of it may be part of another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for scenery that I've seen before include "Landscape features" , "episode" , "On-stage background" , "Theatrical background" , "flats" .)