An Introduction to Landscape and Garden Feng Shui

In China garden design means that the space, even though artificially created, is as close to nature as it can possibly be. This stands in great contrast to Western garden designs, like the renaissance garden, where artistic shapes and linear designs are preferred.

You'll find that daoist philosophy finds many expressions within Garden Feng Shui, one of the main themes is to create a holistic image of nature in a small confined space.This is reflected by presenting and combining various elements like mountains, water, buildings, trees, flowers but also air currents, moon reflections and seasons to one element, representing one unit where human beings and nature can co-exist harmoniously.

Many different types of gardens exist in China. You'll find Gardens of the Emperor, private gardens, gardens belonging to temples as well as landscape gardens and holy mountains (e.g. Wudang Shan) where gardens have been incorporated into the natural surroundings already existing.

Even though garden and landscape feng shui can look back on a long history the actual feng shui garden theory was only developed during the Ming Dynasty. One corpus, which qualifies as the fundamental work, has been created by the scholar Ji Cheng (born 1582).

Thus the theory claims:

The garden follows an inherent logic, but has no specific expression, it seems to be constantly changing.

Its design is so natural that is feels like nature. (...)

Although it was created by man, it seems like it has grown naturally.

In contrast to the West, a property in the Asian area is planned with the garden first. The garden is the heart of the premises and a building would only follow after the main garden has been designed.

Thus follows:

A garden is always a room of the house.
A house is always an element of the garden.

Here are some of the main concepts of Garden Feng Shui:

Tian Jing "Well of the Sky"
Master and servant
Interior and exterior orientation
Routing and direction changes
Narrow and wide as spatial contrasts
Emptiness and fullness / regularly and randomly
Up and down views

In addition you'll also find:

the 5 Elements (also called Five Phases)

applied to the garden in addition to plants, materials and colours.

An example:

The Japanese Garden at Marzahner Erholungspark in Berlin.

This garden was created by a Japanese Zen Monk applying Feng Shui.

Concept: Master and Servant.

The master of a garden is the highlight of the garden:

The servant of a garden is a first glance at the highlight, obscured, not fully, but making you curious - an example here is a distant glance through trees shortly after entering the garden.

If you have a large garden area that several masters can work together: There is more than one highlight in the garden.

"Several masters work together":