Money Corner and Money-Associated Plants for Feng Shui

Wood is the element for the Wealth Corner, and the best way to represent wood is with growing plants. Plants with stiff, pokey leaves are to be avoided; rounded-leaf plants have welcoming energy. This also applies in the far left corner of your back yard. Here’s a list of a few of my favorite plants to enhance financial energy, both inside the house and in your garden. These plant descriptions and photos come from two of my books, Feng Shui for Love & Money and Feng Shui for Hawaii Gardens. The latter has hundreds of photos of plants that grow well in tropical climates and near-ocean landscapes.

Let’s start indoors. If you have trouble keeping houseplants alive, artificial plants are perfectly fine. Just keep them clean and very realistically arranged. The ideal living houseplants for the Money Corner have any of these four characteristics:

Round-Leaf Succulent

Jade plant. In this bright red pot, it’s great used at the front door; in a planter in any rich shade, like red, blue or purple, it works well in a Money Corner. It can also be planted outdoors.

The round shape says that the plant is approachable. The succulent aspect symbolizes prosperity because the leaves are fat with water, and water symbolizes wealth. Most succulents need direct sun or they become leggy, so if your Wealth Corner gets lots of sun, jade plant (Crassula ovata) is a perfect choice. It’s the one I recommend the most because of its fat leaves (which say abundance) and because it’s easy to grow and stays manageable. Cacti generally aren’t a good choice because they have thorns or pointy leaves, but some, such as Christmas cactus, are fine here because they don’t have thorns. The flowers should be a rich red, rather than pink, because this is the area for rich colors.

Expensive and Elegant

Lady palms (Rhapis excelsia) add an elegant touch and look very nice indoors. Make sure the plant never touches the ceiling; that says you’ve reached your limit.

Any expensive plant is good in the Wealth Corner, but it’s ideal if the plant is expensive and elegant. An extremely expensive African violet would be appropriate, especially if the flower color is a deep, rich tone. But it’s even better if the plant looks expensive to almost anyone. Tall plants are generally excellent in this area but make sure they don’t actually touch the ceiling because that says you’ve reached your limit. Palms are unmistakably elegant and very appropriate here, especially the expensive lady palm (Rhapis excelsia). Consider a variegated lady palm if you can find (and afford) one, but make sure it has a distinct variegation, not a blurry variegation. If your budget won’t stretch quite that far, parlor palm (Chamaedora elegans) is also fine.

Plants That Remind You of Money

This is the plant that looks the most like money to me: Dieffenbachia—the type with leaves that look like big dollar bills.

Leaves can look like coins or they can look like paper money. Paper money is my favorite, but coins are better than nothing. Dieffenbachia species (also called dumb cane) has large dark green leaves with spots of white that are reminiscent of large paper currency. Jade plant and its close relative silver dollar plant (Crassula arborescens) have rounded fat leaves which are like big coins, so they are good in the Wealth Corner.

Purple Plants

Purple wandering Jew is an easy-to-grow (almost too easy! It can get weedy) plant with purple in its leaves.

Plants with purple leaves or flowers are excellent in the Wealth Corner. Any African violet that has richly colored flowers is excellent, with purple or violet being the ideal colors. Purple wandering Jew (Tradescantia zebrina or T. pallida) is easy to grow with adequate sun and water. Velvet plant (Gynura aurantiaca), which is also recommended for the Relationship Corner, has beautiful soft, purple hairs and is appropriate for the Wealth Corner. Plants with rich red or blue flowers are also excellent.

Outdoors, you can use plants that follow any of the characteristics mentioned above. Most of the plants mentioned above will grow nicely in your garden, as well as inside the home. There are several very different plants that have “money” in their common name, or are thought of as related to money in different cultures. Here are some that you can grow outdoors:

Malabar Chestnut (Pachira aquatica)

Malabar Chestnut (Pachira aquatica). You can grow it indoors, but outdoors it grows into a large tree.

It’s commonly called money tree by many who practice feng shui because the five leaves are seen to symbolize an auspicious balance of the Five Chinese Elements. This plant is often grown in small pots with several trunks braided together, but it can become a large tree when planted in the ground. The nuts are edible and tasty when cooked. Plants that provide food are symbolic of abundance.

Moneywort (Lysimachia nummulariai)

This perennial has round, shiny leaves the size of a nickel and can be used as a groundcover in wet areas.

Money Tree (Dracaena marginata)

Dracaena marginata, called “money tree” in Hawaii. It doesn’t have an association with money in other places; its feng shui use is not particularly related to money.

It’s only called this in Hawaii, the reason being that the first one was planted outside the Bishop Bank in Hilo in the 1920s. It’s not associated with money anywhere else. The feng shui uses for this plant, at the back and sides of the property, generally relate to upwardness because its form is often upward. It should not be planted close to your home or in your front yard.

Pothos (Epipremnum pinnatum) or Golden Pothos (E. aureum)

It’s related to money in some schools of feng shui, probably because of the leaves’ size.

Silver Dollar (Lunaria annua)

Like many others, this one is also called money plant. It is also known as dollar plant and honesty. It has seedpods that look like silvery coins.