Garden of Cosmic Speculation

The Garden of Cosmic Speculation is at Portrack House, 7 km north- west of Dumfries in South West Scotland. It is a private garden which around 1990 by Charles Jencks and his wife Maggie Keswick, a renowned expert on the history of Chinese garden art, was designed and created.

Charles Jencks began in 1988 with his wife, Maggie Keswick Jencks planning this garden at the home of her mother in Scotland.

Description

The garden is approximately 120 acres in size. The Portrack House, to which the garden is, was built in 1815 as a farm house in the Georgian style. 1879 was a larger growing, but given the style of the house. The house served as a " widow house" ( Dower house) for the estate. John and Claire Keswick, the parents of Maggie Keswick, attracted in the late 1950s in there.

The Garden of Cosmic Speculation name is explained by Charles Jencks so that the garden as a microcosm of the universe is to encourage readers to think about the fundamental aspects of nature and to celebrate this.

Gardens have always been, in a sense analogies of the universe, as it was understood in the particular time; they were motivated by cosmic ideals, such as Zen gardens, ancient Egyptian gardens, Persian paradise gardens, Chinese gardens, French baroque gardens or Italian Renaissance gardens,

In the course of planning, the landscape gardener deeper and deeper into philosophical questions about the garden, such as "What is nature? ", " How do we fit into nature? " " What are the fundamental forces and forms of nature? ". Maggie Keswick Jencks and Charles Jencks have been inspired in the design of this very esoteric acting garden of science and mathematics. They wanted this garden with traditional notions of how a garden should look like, and make the mechanical metaphors of modern science in question.

He created sculptures and landscape forms as a visual metaphor for this topic circle, for example, black holes, fractals, the Big Bang or the selfish gene. For example, there is a " worm hill " ( " snail mound " ), which is inspired by de DNS. The soil used for this purpose fell to by the dredging of the adjacent lakes. The lakes are located immediately south of the River Nith, near the railway bridge over the railway tracks between London - Glasgow crosses the River Nith.

The garden has five areas. He is not planted with very many plants, but sets mathematical formulas and scientific phenomena in sculptures and landscapes around by natural forms with artificial symmetries and curves are combined.

During the development phase of the garden from 1988 to today also changed the presentation of the science of the universe ( cosmology ). Initially superstrings were kept for the basic elements of the universe, its age to 15 billion years ( / - 2 billion) was estimated. As the backbone of the garden stood, was held vibrating membranes ( D- brane ) for the basic structure and from the universe was a multiverse become, with an age of 13 billion years ( / - 2 billion)

This garden is probably unique with its waveforms and linear curves in its kind and marks a new grammar of landscape design. Most likely it is still comparable to the not quite so spectacular garden Little Sparta in Dunsyre near Edinburgh, which deals with the historical and philosophical themes. The Garden of Cosmic Speculation is also reminiscent of works by the American Land Art

Access

The Garden of Cosmic Speculation is a private garden. However, it is again open to the public in order to raise funds for the cancer centers of Maggie 's Cancer Caring Centres on the charity Scotland 's Gardens Scheme; Maggie Keswick died in 1995 from cancer. Charles Jencks founded according to an idea of his wife after her death, a chain of counseling and support centers for cancer patients (Maggie 's Centre ), each with a different architecture. The charitable cancer centers of Maggie 's Cancer Caring Centres are named after Maggie Keswick Jencks, the last wife of Charles Jencks.

For groups, the garden is also accessible additionally after written notification.

Music

The garden was also the subject of an orchestral composition by the American composer Michael Gandolfi, which he created for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox (Massachusetts, USA). The piece was recorded by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and was nominated for the 2009 Grammy Awards in the category "Best Classical Contemporary Composition ."