Sustainable Feng Shui Gardening

By Ross Lamond

There’s Sustainability, Feng Shui and Gardening. Mix them together and we get Sustainable Feng Shui Gardening. Catchy phrase but do they fit together? Ross Lamond believes they do and using his fifty years practical experience working with the land and applying his own interpretation of Feng Shui in the garden, he explored their relationship. He realised beneficial Chi (Qi) energies permeate everything and coupled with a garden's Yin and Yang, a garden could remain sustainable once its Feng Shui became harmonised. Harmony and sustainability fit side by side.
Ross realised natural places practice sustainability but many domestic gardens do not because the gardener isn’t aware of some gardening applications which can benefit the garden’s health, well-being and longevity. Gardeners are missing out, and for some, they are creating places separate to what Nature, a garden’s energy and Feng Shui envisage.
But there’s hope. Ross found by balancing a garden's Yin and Yang, its sustainability was greatly enhanced. It wasn’t all about composting, organic vegetable growing, mulching and the like. It was about the everyday garden along any street becoming sustainable by balancing its Yin and Yang alongside its Chi (Qi), its Five Element Balance and ‘sha and sheng’ energies. These relate to Feng Shui, but Ross realised a garden is also about Nature, it’s a personal place and it’s about the flow of energies we’re aware of. Energies such as time and money spent on labour, machinery and construction. The energy of air and water movement, the energy encapsulated within the soil, a garden’s plants, its insects and birdlife. The garden is a composition of energies mixing it up and each linking to sustain or detract from the garden’s sustainability.
All thought provoking stuff and a realisation a garden’s sustainability is up to the gardener themself. They guide, build or deflate its sustainability, but once they become aware and attune to its benefits (and personal energy) they become uplifted as they connect more deeply with their surroundings.
Ross realised why not put all of these parts together to create a unique vision for the garden. He seems to be making a habit of digging up new ideas for the garden. He would be interested in helping gardeners apply some of the ideas. Especially those interested in creating an Energy Garden built by guiding energy flow or a Feng Shui Garden built on Feng Shui practice and testing the process.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ross Lamond
• Release date: Aug 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9780980758825

Ross Lamond

Ross Lamond is the youngest member of a well-known and respected dairy farming family of the New South Wales South Coast, Australia. He schooled away from home, completing secondary studies at Sydney Grammar School, Sydney. Upon leaving school, Ross returned to the family farm and over a forty year period, gained extensive experience in dairying, beef cattle production, sugarcane, small crop cultivation and horticulture. An ever present interest in the garden naturalised into that of a nurseryman, landscape gardener and grower of in ground trees for landscape. Concern about environmental issues such as tree decline, dry land salinity and habitat degradation led Ross into external studies in Environment at Mitchell College of Advanced Education at Bathurst, followed by post graduate studies in Urban and Regional planning at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. A chance reading of a Feng Shui publication in 1998, introduced Ross to Feng Shui and its influence on our lives and surroundings. He applied some of its principles into the garden and developed his own interpretation of Feng Shui garnished through personal experience and observation. The interest has led Ross into a journey of self-discovery including that of nature, environmentalism and spirituality. It’s an ever growing interest. Ross lives by himself, has four grown up children, and likes to travel and garden and write about his experiences and observations.

Book preview

Introduction

Yin and Yang in the Garden

The Garden

Chi

The Eight Fundamentals

Five Element Balance

Sha (inauspicious) Chi

Influence of Climate

Gardening to the Curve

Chi Line Movement for Rhythm and Flow

Water in There Somewhere

The Garden as a Yin Place

Mimic Nature through Birds and Animals

The Energy Garden

Introduction

Energy in a Natural Place, an Ecological Prospective

Energy Inputs versus Energy Outputs

Water and Wind

Vegetation is Energy

Right Plant for the Right Place

Soils in the Energy Garden

Low in Everything (inputs, money and maintenance)

Labour (ourselves)

The Home and Garden as a Cohesive Energy Unit

Design of the Energy Efficient Garden

Machines and Machinery are Energies

Mid thought

The Natural Garden

Introduction

Native or Natural

Flora Gardens a Native Garden

Kingfisher Bay Resort a Natural Garden

A Natural Garden for Chi Connectedness

Design with Nature

Planning and Care of a Natural Garden

De-scaping or Nil-scaping

Right Plant in a Natural Garden

Disturbance

Maintenance

Natural Hazards – Wild fire

The Planned Residential Community

Natural Process of Rehabilitation

The Personal Garden

Introduction

Extending the Gardening Experience

The 24 hour Garden

Symbolism and Embellishments

Daily Tasks

Connectedness

A Special Space and Sacred Space

The Personal Touch a Zen Thing

Choices

A Bit of Knowledge Goes a Long Way

Afterthought

The Global Prospective

Feng Shui

The Backyard as a Food Source and Family Unit

Connectedness

The Quandary of Sustainability

Appendix 1 One Line Ideas for the Sustainable Garden

Appendix 2 Ten Sustainability Options for the Feng Shui, Energy, Natural and Personal Gardens

Appendix 3 ‘Sha’ Chi Energies

Preface

How do I create a book about sustainable Feng Shui gardening? The name sounds catchy, possibly something new...Worth a go!,..I suggest.

Anyway, it seemed to be a silly idea; too much work and dredging the weary mind for new ideas, and they bringing up all those pesky questions. Too many questions and that word work cropping up again. ‘Bloody’ work to describe it in Australian vernacular.

Being sustainable in the garden could become hard work, but there’s something on offer for the effort. Work has its rewards and while we whinge about it, our gardens continually work for us, doing their thing and practicing sustainability. They’re sustainability devotees, growing, being alive; their plants competing with their neighbours, thriving to survive and remain intact. Natural things such as plants seek sustainability. They want to live and I guess we all practice our own form of sustainability for the same reason.

Permanence is something we also seek, and possibly it’s about buying enough time to do our thing before we move on. The garden plant for example does exactly that and practices its own game of sustainability knowing it too has only a limited time to grow, develop and reproduce itself; accepting it will move on and its space sometime in the future, be occupied with something else.

A flower or burst of new growth, maybe from a Petunia or bulb such as the Gladiolus coming from the ground to develop its foliage then send up a spray of flowers, showing off of their potency and strength. Each Gladiolus flower stem has presence and eventually succumbs to its genes to fade away; returning to the ground in one form or another, a process of Yin and Yang, continuous, and the bulb remaining to repeat the effort some time up ahead. The Yin displayed in the bulb, Yang in the spurt of growth and development; flowers or floristic combining to display the synergy between Yin and Yang, and finally the plant falling back to a Yin state as it fades back into the ground, the process sustainable, and each part of the plants evolution being sustainable and accepting its only for a short period of time. Their Yin and Yang continually in flux and balance between their extremes and sought and achieved. If the balance fails, the plant’s perpetuity becomes threatened.

The garden is also a place of our making and dependent upon us for its care and maintenance. We urge it to grow and develop as envisaged. We construct a foundation and nurture its many parts, waiting for the garden to flourish and reward us with the strength and power each part transmits, absorbing its Chi and us taking solace for being within its presence.

The garden, a potential source of beneficial and auspicious Chi to strengthen and give us vitality along with its peace and tranquillity, the garden our host and we passengers there for a journey to fulfilment.

But all our efforts require energy and that comes at a cost in terms of labour, materials and machinery, the use of introduced chemicals and products along with moisture or whatever we need to supply to ‘make little things grow’, and maybe it’s at this point when sustainability, (as we understand) is determined and its effectiveness noted.

Natural places practice sustainability with religious zeal because ‘good old’ nature is in control and has a thing called time up her sleeve. She can play her game of sustainability over whatever time span she chooses. The creatures and plants that make up a natural place remain hitched to a process of evolution. The creatures and plants locked into a sequence limited by their makeup and inability to ‘get up and move somewhere else’, and most of them, especially plants; just can’t do that. They doing their Yin and Yang thing riveted to their surroundings and time remains their reward and enemy. The wonders of nature and that of a natural place become a study of sustainability.

We accept it’s not permanent and could be termed ‘fleeting’, because natural places are subject to the vagrancies of climate and intrusions such as fire, flood, drought, sleet and snow, and of course other creatures who predate on plants and each other. Even the humble plant affixed to its place can be taken over by another plant that is more able to compete for that space, and so life goes on, sustainability a hope for those creatures and plants but transparent over time.

Ok, then there’s something in nature and the natural place to suit sustainable practice. Can we convert it into the garden model and use something of it as an approach or technique for our gardening?

I think we can, so now we have a player, let’s call it a natural approach.

Another approach comes to mind. I recall discussing the role of energy with a friend and they interested in the idea that energy and its movement could help us become more sustainable in the garden. Energy in its many forms the driver of life and change within our planet, and could be applied in the garden by accepting energies going into the garden have a value and relate to its outcomes. By organising something of the energies entering the garden, we inadvertently become sustainable because we have made a saving in energy conversion, e.g., turning off a dripping tap or reducing lawn areas to reduce the frequency of mowing.

Thinking about it and thinking can be a problem; I can come up with another approach or technique for adoption into the garden sustainability model. How many options is this bloke going to come up with?

I’ll call it, the personal approach and probably easily overlooked because we are the ones doing it and we aren’t readily sustainable. We may try to be but we need energy in its myriad of forms to maintain our lifestyle including a motor car, mobile phone, electricity, clothing and processed food. We create an energy trail and it’s something alien to what a garden naturally espouse. In a way, we are becoming attached to worlds of Yang; manmade worlds of our making and separating ourselves from the earth, which was once home and protector. I suggest we are ‘Yangifying’ (a new word) the planet through our presence, Yang not a perpetrator to sustainability at all, but a perpetuator to chance and change. These two words (chance and change) are opposed to Yin and its passivity and stability. Yin wants to ensure we have a place of continuality and stability, the womb from where we can sustain ourselves and remain nourished. This game being carried out on planet Earth since life forms evolved.

Sorry about those ramblings, I got carried away, but another story waits to discuss our ‘Yangifying’ the planet.

Coming back to the task in hand, I think we have an opportunity to become part of the sustainable trend. It’s possibly a case of us or them, a personal thing between you and your surroundings, including the garden and you making a choice as to what you call ‘sustainable living’. Maybe something simple like turning off the hose tap to prevent a drip or leaving the lawn to grow just a little longer before mowing it, a myriad of things but personal choices and decisions which denote your stamp on your garden as a practitioner of sustainability.

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