The Edge, Haven – August – September 2006 issue
The landscape of your environment can affect your life.
FENG SHUI is all about a person’s ‘Earth’ luck and the study of how the environment affects us. However, popular feng shui so often talks about the arrangement of furniture and feng shui ornaments in the home that we forget classical feng shui covers a much broader spectrum. How often have we thought about the landscape of our environment beyond the walls of our home and how it may affect our lives? What about the immediate environment of our home — the garden?
In ancient China, traditional feng shui began as a method for selecting propitious burial sites of rulers to ensure the fortune of their descendants. These ancient feng shui sages were masters in understanding the effect of conformation, shape, size, height, appearance, texture, and colour of the land. Through the ages, these feng shui masters’ expertise was employed to select ideal settlements, townships, and cities for dynasties.
As feng shui became accessible to common people in townships with limited land space, feng shui masters turned their focus to the positioning of a property and its interior.
This is increasingly true in our modern society of apartment living, where today’s masters are focusing their attention on interior space. But for those of us who live in a landed property and have a garden, we can make feng shui relevant to the space regardless of the garden’s size.
THE GARDEN ENVIRONMENT
The layout of your garden has critical implications on the feng shui of your home — the location of the swimming pool or the pond, the alignment of your waterfall or stream, the positioning of sculptures, lighting or landscape boulders are all environmental factors that can bring you fortune or misfortune.
