Before We Manage the Land, Should We First Learn to Read It?
My contribution to Country & Town House’s Magic Roots — and why I believe understanding the blueprint of a place should come before deciding what we do with it.
Earlier this year, I was delighted to be invited to contribute to Magic Roots, a feature written by Tessa Dunthorne for Country & Town House, exploring the renewed interest in land energy healing, dowsing, geomancy and more intuitive ways of working with the natural world.
The article looked at a growing movement amongst landowners, gardeners and practitioners who are beginning to consider something that, in many ways, our ancestors would have taken for granted: our relationship with the land itself.
I was invited to contribute from my perspective as a Land & Home Healing practitioner, dowser and shamanic practitioner, and the conversation brought me back to a question that sits at the heart of my work: Do we really understand a place before we decide what we want to do with it?
Perhaps we have reversed the order
Much of modern land management begins with an objective.
We want to grow food.
We need housing.
We want greater biodiversity.
We want woodland.
We want to create a garden.
We want to manage flooding.
We want land to become commercially productive.
The objective itself may be entirely worthwhile.
But very often we begin with the question: How do we make this piece of land do what we have decided it should do? I wonder whether, sometimes, we have the order the wrong way around.
What if the first question were not: What do we want from this land?
but: What is already here? Before deciding how a place should be managed, perhaps we first need to understand the blueprint of the land itself.
The blueprint of a place
Every landscape has its own story. Some of that story is tangible.
There is the geology beneath our feet.
The quality and structure of the soil.
Underground water. Rivers and springs. The slope of the land.
Prevailing winds. Sunlight.
Existing plants and wildlife.
There are old pathways, field boundaries and ancient routes.
There are the remnants of previous buildings and settlements.
There is the way generations of people have lived as nomads, farmed, built upon, changed and interacted with that particular place.
But for me, there is another layer too.
I work from a geomantic and animistic understanding of landscape, which recognises that a place is more than simply an area of ground waiting for us to decide its purpose.
We are in relationship with it. Within my own practice, this includes recognising what is sometimes described as the spirit of place — the individual character and presence of a landscape and the relationship between that place and the people living upon it.
The blueprint therefore isn't simply energetic, and nor is it purely physical.
It is the whole picture.
The land was there first
This is one of the simplest principles behind my Land & Home Healing work.
The land was there before the house.
Before foundations were laid, water moved through that place.
Trees grew and disappeared.
Animals travelled across it.
People crossed it.
Boundaries shifted.
Earlier buildings may have stood there.
People lived, worked, celebrated, struggled and died there.
Every property we inhabit today is simply one chapter in a much longer story.
That is why, when I am asked to work with a home or piece of land, I don't look only at the building.
I begin with the place.
Learning to read landscape isn't new
Human beings haven't always separated themselves from landscape in the way we often do today. For earlier societies, understanding the land wasn't optional.
Where you placed a home mattered.
Where water flowed mattered.
The direction a building faced mattered.
Shelter, sunlight, drainage, soil and weather could determine whether a settlement flourished.
Alongside this practical knowledge, many cultures also held traditions in which land, trees, springs, mountains and particular places carried spiritual significance.
Geomancy developed in different forms across cultures as a way of understanding our relationship with place. Ancient Chinese feng shui, which has also formed part of my own studies, is perhaps one of the best-known examples. Its traditional principles consider the relationship between people, buildings, landscape, water and the movement of energy through a place. These traditions were not simply about making somewhere look beautiful.
They were about placement, relationship and understanding landscape before acting upon it.
I don't believe we need to romanticise the past or pretend every culture understood landscape in exactly the same way. They didn't. But there is something within many older traditions that I believe we have partly forgotten: before placing ourselves upon the land, we paid attention to it and connected to the spirit of place, the understanding of cosmology and animism - everything is spirit.
What modern land restoration is beginning to rediscover
Interestingly, some modern approaches to land management are beginning to bring us back towards aspects of this understanding. Projects such as Knepp in Sussex with exciting news they will be re-wilding in Herstmonceus have helped demonstrate what can happen when we stop trying to control every element of a landscape and allow natural processes more opportunity to lead. At the same time, regenerative farming and the growing focus on soil health are reminding us that healthy land begins with relationships we cannot necessarily see. Beneath our feet is an extraordinary living world of roots, fungi, mycellium, microorganisms, water and soil organisms interacting with one another. If that underground system is damaged, what happens above ground is affected too.
Rewilding, soil regeneration and regenerative agriculture are enormously important developments.
But I find myself wondering whether we can take the idea one step further. Before regeneration, before conservation, before planting, before building and before farming — have we actually learnt to understand the place itself?
Land management built upon relationship
Imagine if that understanding became the foundation. We first explore the blueprint of the land.
Its water.
Its geology.
Its soil.
Its ecology.
Its history.
Its old boundaries and pathways.
The impact of previous human intervention.
The relationships already existing between plants, wildlife and landscape.
And, within the type of work I practise, its energetic and spiritual landscape too.
Then our decisions about how we farm it, rewild it, plant it, build upon it or care for it can be built upon that understanding.
That feels very different to deciding what we want first and attempting to make the land conform afterwards. It is not about abandoning farming, planning, conservation science or practical land management. Quite the opposite. It is about giving those things a deeper foundation.
Listening doesn't mean doing nothing
One of the ideas explored within Tessa's Magic Roots article particularly resonated with me.
It concerned land where trees needed to be removed for sound ecological reasons.
The practical decision had already been made. What was different was the willingness to pause before acting — to acknowledge that an intervention was taking place and to recognise a relationship with the living landscape.
For me, this is an important distinction. Listening to land doesn't mean we never cut down a tree. It doesn't mean we stop growing food. It doesn't mean we shouldn't build homes.
And it certainly doesn't mean human beings somehow sit outside nature. We are nature too. The question is whether we behave like owners standing above a landscape or participants within a much larger living system and understanding that spirit resides in all matter.
Why are people returning to these ideas?
This was another part of my conversation with Tessa.
Many people feel increasingly disconnected from the natural world whilst at the same time becoming acutely aware of our impact upon it. Environmental change, extreme weather, loss of habitat and the pressures placed upon the natural world can leave people feeling powerless.
I believe this is one reason there has been renewed interest in shamanism, animism and other older ways of understanding our relationship with nature. As I said in Magic Roots: “We have this growing sense of our own impact, and shamanism is appealing because it subscribes to older, more holistic worldviews.” For me, the word relationship is key. Shamanic and animistic traditions do not place human beings outside the natural world. We are part of it. The wellbeing of the land and our own wellbeing cannot be entirely separated.
This is where my Land & Home Healing work begins
When somebody asks me to work with their home, garden, business or land, I don't arrive with a predetermined ritual. And I don't begin by assuming that something needs to be cleared. I begin by listening. I use dowsing, geomancy, shamanic practice, observation, historical information and many years of experience working intuitively with people, spirit and place to begin forming a picture of the land's blueprint.
I may explore underground water, geological and energetic disturbance, areas of geopathic stress, old boundaries and pathways, previous land use and the relationship between buildings and the land beneath them.
I also look at how people experience different parts of a property.
Why does one room feel peaceful while another never seems comfortable?
Why are people consistently drawn towards a particular part of a garden?
Why do similar patterns sometimes appear across different occupants of the same house?
And where it is relevant, I also explore spiritual presence or activity and the spirit of place itself.
Only once I have begun to understand what is there do I consider what the work might require.
Sometimes very little needs to change.
Sometimes there may be clearing, healing or ceremony.
Sometimes the work involves restoring balance following disturbance to the land.
And sometimes the most valuable outcome is simply helping someone begin to understand and relate to the place in which they live in a completely different way.
An ancient image with a surprisingly modern message
There is an image I have been particularly drawn to while considering these ideas.
Berthold Furtmeyr's The Tree of Death and Life, created in the late 15th century, shows a single tree carrying profoundly different possibilities.
It is a Christian manuscript illumination, rich with its own theological symbolism, yet I find the central image interesting from another perspective too.
The same tree can represent nourishment and consequence, life and death. For me, it provides a beautiful visual reminder that our relationship with the natural world matters.
Land itself isn't simply a commodity. The way we relate to it — and what we choose to do with it — has consequences.
Image caption for Wix:
The Tree of Death and Life, Berthold Furtmeyr, c.1482–1489. Salzburg Missal, BSB Clm 15710, fol. 60v. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich. Public Domain.
What if land management began with relationship?
Perhaps this is the wider conversation I hope Magic Roots helps to open.
We need healthy soil.
We need regenerative farming.
We need thoughtful conservation.
We need biodiversity.
We need ways of producing food sustainably.
We need homes and communities.
And we need to continue learning how to repair some of the damage human activity has caused.
But perhaps all of those things could become even more effective if they were built upon something older:
relationship with place.
Rather than beginning with:
What can this land give us?
perhaps we begin with:
What is already here?
What is the story of this place?
What relationships are already present within this landscape?
What has happened here before us?
And ultimately:
How can what we need exist in relationship with the land rather than simply overriding it?
For me, this is at the heart of Land & Home Healing. It isn't about rejecting modern knowledge or trying to return to some imagined version of the past. It is about bringing together what we understand today about ecology, soil, water and landscape with something our ancestors perhaps understood more instinctively: we live upon the land, but we are also part of it.
Understanding the blueprint of your land
Through Heart & Home Healing, I work with homes, gardens, businesses and larger areas of land, both here in East Sussex and further afield. Each piece of work is completely individual because no two homes, landscapes — or people — carry exactly the same story.
If you are considering changes to a piece of land, experiencing something within your home or property that you cannot quite explain, or simply feel drawn to understand the place you live in more deeply, you can find out more about my approach to Land & Home Healing.
Explore Land & Home Healing →
As featured in Country & Town House
Elizabeth (Min) Peterken contributed to “Magic Roots” by Tessa Dunthorne, published in Country & Town House, March/April 2026. The feature explored the renewed interest in land energy healing, dowsing, geomancy, shamanism and the relationship between people and the natural world.
Elizabeth (Min) Peterken
Land & Home Healing Practitioner
Heart & Home Healing · East Sussex
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