I Accidentally Feng Shuied My Butterfly Garden

(Thanks to Gina for the post title!)


I've been working on my butterfly garden this weekend. This is the first time that I've created a bed the right way: marking out the contours of the bed first, digging up the sod, amending the soil, and then...and only then...planting my shrubs. Usually what happens is that my car will be full of plants and I'm wandering around with a shovel thinking "Where can I put these things before I have to go to work Monday morning?" I end up digging holes wherever there is space just to get them in the ground, and invariably a month later, I decide that they would look much better over there.

That system was the chief problem with the butterfly garden. Things were jammed too close together, colors clashed, the bench was in the wrong place, the feng shui was all screwed up, and it just wasn't working.

I dug up two lantana, three spirea, a butterfly bush, and a hummingbird mint. To these I added two more butterfly bushes which have been sitting in pots on the deck all summer, some coneflowers from the bargain table, and started positioning and repositioning everything. It felt rather like trying a large ring of keys to find the one to open a door. At last, the tumblers fell into place, and the garden seemed to say to me, "Yes. This will be beautiful." Then I started digging.

I plunged my pitchfork deep into the bottom of the compost pile and came up with a trove of crumbly brown compost that I mixed in with topsoil and the native red clay, set my plants down into this mixture, and gave them a drink of our precious water. (From the watering can.)

The last element to place was the garden bench. I tried it in several spots until I found one that felt right.

You know, I used to snicker at people who did all that feng shui stuff, worrying about whether the energy was escaping from their garden or getting blocked in a corner or whatever it's not supposed to do. But I'll tell you this. The old butterfly garden never was a very inviting or relaxing place to sit. The bench was there, but I never settled in for any length of time. It was almost like "something" in the garden was nervous. In the last two days, though, even with all we have to do, Teresa and I have spent more time there than we ever have before. Maybe there is something to those ancient Chinese principles. After all, the Chinese had already developed an advanced civilization while my Celtic ancestors were bashing each other over the head with clubs, so I'm not going to scoff at something just because I don't understand it.

The Genius of the Place

To build, to plant, whatever you intend

To rear the column, or the arch to bend,

To swell the terrace, or sink the grot;

In all, let Nature never be forgot...

Consult the genius of the place in all.

--Alexander Pope

My garden began with this rose. It was here when we bought the house two years ago, growing against the fence, seemingly pushed to the very edge of the property by the lawn. It was scraggly and unkempt, having battled both neglect and string trimmers for God knows how long, but it was blooming on the day we signed the papers.

I cut one of the blooms to put in a vase, and while I was cutting, I saw the first hazy vision of my future garden in that expanse of grass.

Later that summer, when I began digging, I found the soil there along the fence to be quite nice and well-drained, as though someone had worked it in the past. Then I began to unearth shards of clay flowerpots and old plant tags, and realized that a garden had grown here once before.

What was it that suggested to me to plant my garden here? Was it the obvious full-sun southern exposure? The fact that there was already something planted there? Or was it something more mysterious, the "genius loci," or "genius of the place," that somehow "knows" how things should be.


I think that every place, even a suburban backyard, has this "genius," or spirit about it. It is what we are listening for when we stand in the yard, "staring at dirt." It speaks softly, but it speaks.















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