Feng Shui science and art holds great sway to gardens that being the distinct concepts of and great powers behind Chinese gardens. That being said Chinese gardens employ great perceptual concepts and deep meanings and entrails not found in your typical backyard or even city park North American USA, Canadian or even European British Gardens. After all it's not as if the history and mental vantage points of Chinese gardens especially as they relate to Feng Shui and its practices are built upon the relatively recent beauty of the Beauchart Gardens in Victoria BC Canada.
Overall it can be said that the beginnings of the art of Chinese Gardens centered in what no doubt were the greatest centers of power in dynastic Chinese times - that of the gardens around spiritual religious sites and the garden areas of the homes of the most wealthy as well as powerful families of their communities. All in all it can be best summarized and detailed that these garden areas represented the attempt and attempts to recreate in essence the very perfection of nature and the creator's finishing touches and indeed great powers between nature and its inherent powers of the unity of human beings.
Overall it can be summarized that in Chinese philosophies and ways of thought and belief structure that garden design and designs conforms to the same philosophical principles as other respected and stately arts. These it can be explained and detailed grew out of the Confusician inherent concepts of art, created by human beings on this earthly paradise themselves but modeled on nature. As well throw in an include for good measure the Taoist beliefs that the natural world and nature gifts serve as the ultimate model and models for art and art forms. No doubt as a result Chinese gardens themselves can be said to be among the most tranquil, serene yet dramatic places in the world and the globe itself.
In China, the garden and home are considered to be one single entity in them overall, as opposed to being the two distinct different entities as viewed and portrayed in western tradition and philosophies of life and work. Basically as seen and portrayed in this manner , the garden and garden areas are drawn into the home through windows and latticed panels , while the walls serve as backdrops to the most carefully and individually chosen plants .
Chinese gardens are designed to accommodate human beings and their activities so buildings as a major feature whether they serve their functions for recreation, as viewing platforms or as observatories. It can be said that in the same way, means and manner that major and renowned European landscape artists take as a matter of their basic crafts and toolbox of creative landscaping and architectural effects that garden scenery can be used and utilized as a backdrop to their gardens, it seemed that ancient Chinese designers incorporated mountains, natural water features and trees into theirs.
Indeed if such natural features were absent, they would go to the greatest of extents and even costs of human labor and capital creating them - building hills and even "importing" large rocks to emulate mountains. It was even said that the Sung Dynasty itself fell from grace to its very end and demise because no less than the Emperor himself became obsessed with transporting huge rocks for his garden from a most remote province and in the end bankrupted the state itself. It can be said that each and every point in one life and indeed in a nation and culture has at its basis their own intrinsic valuation and place in balance and harmony with other facets of their direct and indirect environment and environments.
Feng Shui!
