Mystery and Diversity in the Harmonious Chi Garden
The bus driver said. “Sorry mate, I can’t let you get off here”, and continued blissfully along. He did me a favour dropping me off somewhere I hadn’t been before. I had to walk past a garden. It was there waiting for me to walk by and entice me to exclaim,’’ This garden has it. Bloody mystery’’. I must be strange, craning my neck to see more and getting carried away.
Yes, but what about places that lack mystery or mysterious charm? They just stick to the straight line, form squares and rectangles and limit texture, colour and shape of the built environment. These gardens become sterile. They may look orderly and symmetric, but why? These are Yang styled gardens and aren’t we creating a dominant Yang world?
Sure square and rectangular garden beds look neat, are functional and encourage the eye to appreciate the order of things. And we do so like order. These gardens don’t take up our time to visit. We can enter and leave them with ease and they don’t try to impact on our mind other than acceptance. But what experience did the garden provoke?
Gardens that evoke a mysterious charm offer diversity. They have variety of shapes, sizes and colours. Variation in form such as lawn, stone and pebble. They lead the eye onwards and invite the viewer to enter and explore. Some would call them complex and overplanted, cluttered and oppressing and maybe difficult to maintain.
But, we’re trying to picture a place that has mysterious charm and that charm encourages the mind to seek something else. We can find that something else through a gardens open space, protected with a diversity of colour, shapes, sounds, smells and movement. And such a space, special enough to give us a beneficial chi experience. We are led into this space along pathways that provoke mystery leading us away from Yang worlds. These private places within harmonious chi gardens.
What do we need to think about here?
- Curves and not straight lines (we want to slow down as we leave our Yang worlds outside). Diversity introduced in plantings, pathway texture and pattern.
- Figurines and symbolism introduced through shapes, colours, forms and textures. Diversity further invites us to slow down as we take in our surroundings. But don’t clutter, we still need openness and light and yang elements to keep us bright and cheery.
- Use of pathways to create curiosity. Try not to cramp a pathway. Allow light to enter and also breezes. Breezes bring life and movement.
- Finally, open space invites beneficial chi energies to enter and stay and for us to view pleasant surroundings.
