Your garden can be a perfect retreat in the stressful times we live in and with regards to Feng Shui it is the Yang that balances the Yin, you can have the perfect Feng Shui house, if it is not balanced with your garden your efforts will be wasted. The reason for this is because with an untidy garden you will not get free flowing Ch’i and it will stagnate and this stagnant Chi will end up in your home.

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 affects males
¬ What’s to right of centre (as you look towards the front garden) 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 - it’s just a matter of when, how and to whom. They can be quite serious. In a consultation fairly recently we found that a couple of spike shaped shrubs, one in the garden hedge and one in the middle of the garden were heavily implicated in both the occupants being off work for six months through injury in one case and illness in the other. 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 - it applies to indoors only.
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 like to put water in the garden. A water feature in the garden mainly influences our wealth, but can also affect our health.
Where the water is placed relative to the building and the direction it flows are both important - there are at least 40 formulas which tell you about the effects of both, so finding an auspicious place in the garden can get quite complicated. 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 - and that’s fairly easy. Just test it by placing a bucket of water there and (apart from keeping the water clean and fresh) leave it in place for a couple of months whilst keeping a lookout for ill effects.
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.