Garden Alive: Feng Shui on the Path

My husband has completed the enormous project of cutting a path through our backyard hill as discussed in a past blog. As with many projects that have a purpose, it took on a life of its own. He listened to its flow and followed the energy to create a beautiful, meandering walk through a once unwalkable hill.

What the path accomplished for us is a definition of areas. Instead of one big hill to consider, we now have smaller garden plots that can be treated as a unit. One day as I was walking the path, I was inspired with an idea that will help define the areas even more, which is to give them specific names. We could name one of them after our cat Bodhi who typically sits in that part of the hill—the Bodhi Garden. Another area where years ago we placed a lawn ornament with the Chinese character for ch’i could be called The Ch’i Garden.

When incorporating Feng Shui in a home, I’m very specific about instructing people to use all the rooms in their home. If not, some part of the home and their lives will become stagnant. It has become blatantly obvious this same concept must be applied to the garden as well. If there are parts of your garden or yard you can’t get to or don’t access, something is going to be dormant in your own life.

Whether we stay with the suggested names is yet to be determined. Not only does the gardener himself have to determine their appropriate titles, but also the garden. Anyone who has walked the path comes away with a smile on their face and their spirits lifted. Something came alive when the path was uncovered, and it isn’t just us. Everyday I see our cats strolling on the new walkway. In fact, one day I found one of them actually sleeping on the path. Knowing how cats are so sensitive to energy, I have no doubt an energy has surfaced offering a fresh message from the land. I’ll bet the garden can offer up some great names—better than any we’d conjure up or imagine.

Uncovering a Path and Following Its Flow

Our house has been blessed with a steep little hill in the back. It’s a great Feng Shui asset, representing protection and support. Most Feng Shui people would love to have a hill like ours in the back of their house. That said, it is still a challenge to maneuver up the hill requiring someone to crawl around on hands and knees trying to plant anything. The hill extends into our next door neighbors’ yard and they have resorted to planting grass on the surface---an interesting sight when they try to use the lawn mower. My gardener husband has planted various shrubs and lilies, hydrangeas and phlox on the hill, but by mid-summer it’s overgrown with weeds because, of course, it’s nearly impossible to scale the hill to do any maintenance.

Somewhere in the not-too-distant past, my husband and I discussed terracing the hill to make it easier to get up there. We also tossed around an idea for a path that would take us to areas of the hill we had never been able to attain. We couldn’t ever figure out how either project would work, they each sounded like a humungous undertaking, and my husband quite honestly didn’t think he could pull it off.

For some reason, this spring things were different. One warm afternoon we stood at the base of the hill and in about 30 minutes’ time, we could see where a path should go. We crawled up the hill and let it open up in front of us, around some of the shrubs, in front of others, from one end of the garden to the other. Our excitement was unbounded!

The path is in progress as I write this. We have already blessed it with some Feng Shui energy. The excitement about it is that it seems to be guiding the project. Every now and then my husband will come in and say “Look what the path is doing now!” It’s better than we could ever have done ourselves. It has come together fluidly---I won’t say easily because I’ve watched the effort it takes to lug the stones up the hill. But there is a definite organic force behind it all.