Feng Shui in The Garden
Feng Shui is the ancient Chinese practise of placement and arrangement of space to achieve harmony with the environment, often associated with common domestic attitudes, such as furniture arrangement and garden space. The literal translation actually means 'wind-water', which can be attributed to peace and harmony.
Feng shui involves the use of geographical, psychological, philosophical, mathematical, aesthetic and astrological concepts in relation to space and energy flow. It is not meant to be used as a decorative ruling, but a discipline with guidelines compatible with many different techniques of architectural planning.
How Feng Shui Works in Your Garden
The concept is that bringing the use of Feng Shui into your garden and home will help promote peace and harmony. Lots of clutter outside will block vibrant chi from your life. The first step to bringing harmony in your garden is getting rid of any weeds and clutter to open up your garden and allow chi to flow freely. Your garden needs to incorporate the same principles as your home to bring you peace and harmony.
This means that when planning specific paving, patio and drive designs it is important to consider the space they are likely to use and the possibility that they may conflict with the Feng Shui of your home. Consider the placement and use of an abundance of materials very carefully as some of the more difficult jobs do not require the use of a lot of space and things can quite easily be kept to a minimum, ensuring that your home stays as a Feng Shui home should.
Factors Affecting Feng Shui
Consider that, one of the most important factors attributed to Feng Shui is the direction in which your property, or objects within, are facing. When laying a patio, or building a driveway or garden structure, consider carefully the type of point you are trying to put across, or the nergy you are attempting to let flow. For example:
- North - represents creativity and growth
- Northeast - represents spiritual and mental growth, nature and mediation
- Easterly - represents family life, rebirth and regeneration, healing and harmony
- Southeast - represents material possessions, wealth and abundance
- South - represents the fire of life
- Southwest - represents marriage, relationships, romance love and partners
There is a lot to consider when planning your garden design, but if you ensure that you comply with the style Feng Shui stands for and use the list above to make the garden show the way you feel, or the environment you want you garden to represent it can be achieved, especially considering that you do not have to build manty structures or lay much stone to do this.