What is a Feng Shui Garden? You can bring balance to a garden by incorporating the five elements. A feng shui garden can greatly enhance the effects of feng shui in your home. Feng shui gardens can range...
A feng shui garden can greatly enhance the effects of feng shui in your home. Feng shui gardens can range from huge elaborate areas to a small space on an apartment patio. The most noticeable feature that distinguishes feng shui gardens from other gardens is the balance and ease of the garden itself. "A Feng Shui Garden is about balance. Feng Shui is about creating spaces whether inside or outside where you feel calm, peaceful, and balanced," says feng shui consultant Linda Binns, founder and executive director of the Feng Shui Success Institute and owner of Harmony Inside.
Three things to keep in mind when creating your garden are:
Balance of the elements
Balance of yin and yang
Energy flow
Balancing the elements
"You can bring balance to a garden by incorporating the five elements." Colors are useful in representing the elements. Linda suggests using flowers to bring balancing colors into your garden, "You have your plants that are usually green," representing the element of wood, "and you can bring other colors into the scene with flowers. You can bring in metal with the white flowers. You can bring in fire with red flowers. You can also add the element of water." Fountains and sprinklers are a great way to introduce the element of water. Of course, the dirt itself would represent the element of earth. Linda says, "We have to have all of the five elements together to bring balance. If you look at any of the forms of Chinese medicine, it talks about these elements as well. We have good health when all of these elements are present, and they are balanced. We instinctively feel good in an environment where all of these elements are present. In a Feng Shui Garden, Feng Shui principles are brought to it."
Balancing Yin and Yang
Balancing yin and yang in the garden can be accomplished in many ways. Yin represents dark and passive energy. Yang represents light and active energy. When designing your garden you may choose to balance the garden against the house with the house representing yin and the garden representing yang, or you may choose to have two gardens balanced against each other. With two gardens the yang garden would be filled with plants that crave maximum sun exposure, and this would be your public garden. The yang garden would be home to shade loving plants and provide a private, peaceful respite for reading, relaxing, and enjoying a cool breeze in the shade on a hot summer day. Remember when balancing yin and yang that each should contains a tiny kernel of the other to maintain the balance. A shady garden would still have a sunny, vibrant patch and vice versa.
Energy flow
The feng shui garden has a very comfortable and natural look and feel, conducive to energy flow. Curved and irregular shaped lines and boundaries help to achieve this relaxed and flowing effect. Other types of gardens are often severe and may feel artificial. Rocks, hedges and flower beds, rather than bricks and fences, make good boundaries. Round or curved paving stones are preferable to straight-edged stones, but by placing the stones in curving or other interesting patterns, straight-edges stones can be remedied and encourage energy flow. Always keep the bagua in mind when designing the layout of your garden. This will help to facilitate the proper flow of energy.
Decorative items can double as energy boosters and create balance. Items such as a gazing ball, bird feeder, or a comfortable bench, will make the garden more charming and inviting and when placed properly, they can enhance energy flow and help to balance the elements. You do not want to create clutter in your garden by adding too many decorative items, so choose carefully and stick with symbols that are meaningful to you personally.
