© 1997 -
by UK practitioner Master Thomas Coxon
Authentic Feng Shui
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Feng Shui -
Most of what we’ve said in the section on Form School applies to gardens. In fact your garden if you have one is the place where you can influence the form which surrounds your house.
So lets take a look at some of the basic principles that you can apply for yourself.
Entrances
First and foremost, do not move any entrances to either your garden or your home. If such changes are made they will have major repercussions on the feng shui inside the building, and unless you’ve had those assessed first, you could inadvertently create some fairly serious difficulties for yourself.
OK, what can you do then ?
As a general rule the more energy that you have entering the garden, the more you end up with in the house, and the better your life. So firstly you can ensure that entrances are kept clear and unobstructed, so that the energy can flow easily into the garden.
Fences
Next it’s important that the energy stays in the garden, so make sure that the hedges and fences, walls etc. around the sides and back of the garden are kept in good repair.
The primary function of the garden from a feng shui perspective is to hold the energy near to the house. It does that much better if the middle of both the front and rear garden is kept open and low. This is particularly important for the front garden.
Parts of the Garden
There are various analyses which can be done to tell which parts of a garden affect a particular person, when and in what ways.
But some general rules are:
- What’s in the front garden affects your future, particularly your income
- What’s in the rear garden affects your strength, but particularly your health
- What’s to left of centre (as you look from the house towards the front garden) affects males
- What’s to right of centre affects females
From this comes one of the feng shui “old wives tales” of don’t put water in the front right of the garden. The reason is that it brings attractive females to the house, which can lead to problems for married couples !!!!
Shapes
As a general rule, curves are best and spikes do cause problems -
A lot is written about the need for curved paths and the dangers of straight ones. In theory it’s right, and curved garden paths definitely do feel nicer, but it’s rare for a “straight path” in a suburban UK garden to be anywhere near long enough to create a problem.
Colours
So if curvy plants and paths in the garden are best, what about colours ?
Well, colours interact with compass directions in some very specific ways, in much
the same way as shapes do, but the Pakua that’s published in many of the books isn’t
one of them -
So unless you’re willing to spend years studying feng shui, or seek advice from someone who has, how do you choose auspicious colours for your garden?
Fortunately there’s a very easy way which will work most of the time.
Where a garden feels nice it generally has auspicious feng shui influences. Or put the other way round, if you chose colours which “feel” right, generally they will help create auspiciousness in the feng shui.
Water
Many people (and lots of feng shui web sites) like to put water in the garden.
A water feature in the garden mainly influences our wealth, but can also affect our health (water indoors does as well but less powerfully).
Where the water is placed relative to the building and the direction it flows are
both important -
Water Dragons for instance occur where water flows past the front door and have a very powerful effect for good or ill. They can be naturally occurring, or they can be deliberately created to enhance the feng shui influences, or they can arise as a side effect of open drainage e.g the one on the right.
However if your aim is to just to have some water in the garden that looks nice,
all you really need to do is check that your desired location doesn’t cause a problem
-
If you’re planning to create a stream in your garden you really need to get professional advice at the planning stage rather than taking a chance, particularly if the stream is in the front garden.
One final word about gardens. There is nothing magic about the garden boundary which says that what’s inside the garden affects you and what’s outside the garden doesn’t. Things in your neighbours garden influence you and your garden influences them.
Further Reading
I’d love to be able to recommend some good books for you to read further on this subject, but every one that I’ve come across tells you (sometimes in great detail) how to apply the indoor PaKua to your garden. My Master asked one such author when she was in class studying with him “Is a garden fully enclosed by walls and a roof ? No ? Then you need to use the outdoor arrangement of the tri grams, not the indoor one”. That author went ahead and published a book a year after that conversation telling people how to apply the indoor PaKua to their gardens. Whether authors knowingly (in that case) or in ignorance tell you the wrong stuff about the PaKua, how much confidence can you have in the rest of what they say ?
Given that garden feng shui can have much more powerful effects than anything you do indoors (so powerful that you may not always get the chance to put right any mistakes which you make), it behoves you well to proceed cautiously and seek advice from a professional with both knowledge and experience.
There are a couple of things which you can do to help yourself in recognising such
a person. The first is to read the book opposite written by Lillian Too (who is not
the person I was referring to above -
DIY TIP
In the garden it’s a good idea to keep all the fencing and hedging in good condition, as any gaps will let energy leak out. These leaks are usually harmful to someone or other in the house.
Curved plants, borders and paths are usually more auspicious in the garden that straight ones.
Keep the middle of both front garden and rear garden open and low.
Never ever be tempted to relocate a garden gate or other entrance without first getting professional advice.
