Feng Shui for Gardens (ISBN 1862043558)

Completely impractical for most gardeners.:
If you just bought yourself a big empty lot and will be designing and building your house and garden, this is the perfect book for you. For the rest of us with small, non-rectangular lots and existing houses, this book is useless. I've never understood why so many people have a hard time understanding feng shui, but reading this book illuminated me. My interest in feng shui comes from Karen Rauch Carter and Terah Kathryn Collins, both of whom take ancient philosophies and practically and usefully apply them to Western culture. Lillian Too's feng shui seems to me to be so rigid as to be impossible for the majority of us to implement. For example, this book advises that water elements (ponds, fountains) should go on the north side of your property. Well, that's not where I want (or have room) for my fountain. I want a fountain--where else can I put it? This book doesn't say, leaving me with the impression I'm courting feng shui disaster to place a fountain anywhere else in my yard. This book also advises that palm trees, because of their height and the shape of their leaves, are dangerous to have anywhere around your home. As a Southern Californian, I find this very hard to believe. I also don't care for the assertion that cacti and other desert plants are dry and "dead" and therefore bad to have in my garden. Am I supposed to purchase only those plants that grow in China, regardless of my own climate and soil conditions? I had hoped to obtain some sound advice to help me design my garden, but this book is filled with inflexible dictates rather than helpful guidelines. There aren't many feng shui gardening books out there, but I'll wait for a good one to be published. I got my money back for this one.

Inspiring:
What a lovely, positive and uplifting piece of work. As a newcomer to the world of Feng Shui but an experienced gardener, I was so delighted that Lillian was so encouraging and informative. Give it a go, you too will be the recipient of all the benefits of this glorious way of life in your lush gardens.

Beautiful collection of ideas:
I found this book a wonderful collection of ideas, rather than a 'narrative'. Almost every 2 page layout can stand on its own as a graphic/textual design. I particularly enjoyed the discussion of the creative and destructive cycles. This wasn't anything new, but it made sense for the first time. The book strongly emphasizes the coordination of garden layout with a southern facing home entrance. There really are no alternatives offered. I found this a bit rigid at first, but the northern exposure of any garden wall will always have limited sunlight, so I concluded it might not be entirely unreasonable. Ms Too minces few words when something strikes her as a bad idea. I think at one point, she concludes a misplaced water feature could lead to madness in the family. This is likely to offend some, but one won't be bored! The book seems a good reference. Since every 2 page layout is so rich with metaphors and relations between text and graphics, it will be rewarding for study over and over, again.

I couldn't put it down:
This book flows around its subject matter in much the way that the water dragon formula in Chapter Six identifies "auspicious" water flows with respect to the main doors facing different compass directions. It is well written and concise while still covering a lot of ground. I was fascinated with the collage illustrations. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if it turns out to be auspicious to read a book that has the word "auspicious" on every page.

Feng Shui for Gardens:
The basic ideas in this book are good and the illustrations are great. However several subjects were lacking complete explaination and left me thinking I had missed something. The biggest disappointment for me though was the over-use of the work auspicious. By the end of the second chapter I caught myself counting how many times that word appeared on one page. I realize the word auspicious is a very powerful word, but in a 217 page book that word appears at least once on every page or at least it sure seemed so? I don't think I will be able to get past this and probably will return the book for another selection by a different author.