Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #607886 in Books
• Published on: 2000-01-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Customer Reviews

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.

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.

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.