The Fen Shui Garden. The more people you talk to about Fen Shui and gardening, more opinions on it you get. Ms. Robin Wood, a very talented landscape architect once told me, “Fen Shui gardening is really just good landscape design.” And to a point, I would agree with her. In many ways ancient Chinese philosophy of Fen Shui, also called Feng Shui, is all about creating harmony. In a true Fen Shui garden focus is on atmosphere. A garden is created that encourages meditation, relaxation, close connections to Nature. A good Fen Shui garden does not ignore any of our senses. There are fragrant flowers to smell, wind chimes, sounds of water, and songs of birds to please our ears, shade from hot sun, protection from wind, places just to sit and think, contrasting surfaces to feel, beauty to please our eye, and perhaps even some fruit or vegetable for our tongue to taste. A true Fen Shui garden is not strictly formal, overly clipped, too tidy and sanitary, all drawn with squares and rectangles. Shrubs don’t need to be square nor do all trees need to resemble each other. A quiet restrained informality is encouraged. Love, peace, understanding, and wisdom reign in a true Fen Shui garden. In many ways during all my years at Youth Authority, although I didn’t know it at time, I was instinctively trying to develop a Fen Shui garden. Surrounded by guards, gangs, and concertina razor wire, I aspired to create an inner sanctum, a natural place for me and my students to remove ourselves from all bad vibes so very close by. I am not a Fen Shui expert by any means and certainly do not claim to be, but I have read a great deal about it, listened to numerous talks given by so-called experts, and I have long been interested and involved in garden design. I think that Fen Shui does indeed have much to offer and that it is well worth exploring. However, I often notice a certain snobbishness surrounding subject. One expert writes that none of others know what they’re talking about, especially Western writers and speakers. I’ve met some Fen Shui designers and writers who were cold, impersonal and rude, none of which jives with true Fen Shui in my mind. I sometimes encounter a similar snobbishness with people who refuse to grow any plants not native to their own little local area. My feeling about all these snobby attitudes in gardening is this: Elitism doesn’t belong in garden. Plants aren’t critical, let’s not be that way ourselves. Many people, far wiser than I, have long known that more we learn about something, more we realize how little we know. Harold Young, wonderful senior editor of Pacific Coast Nurseryman Magazine once wrote me in an email, “I used to think I knew a lot of plants.” I know just what he means.