The Garden of Cosmic Speculation

Snail-shaped grass mounds, twisting DNA helix sculptures and undulating waves of rhododendrons make up The Garden of Cosmic Speculation, a thirty-acre garden designed by architecture theorist Charles Jencks and his late wife, Maggie Keswick.

Located at their private residence, Portrack House, near Dumfries, Scotland, the garden's design is guided by the fundamentals of modern physics and, according to Jencks, brings out the basic elements that underlie the cosmos. From 1989 until Keswick's death in 1995, Jencks and his wife, an expert on Chinese gardens, met with horticulturists and scientists in order to design a landscape that would bridge the worlds of art, nature and science.

Perhaps viewed as an unconventional approach to landscaping, the garden features a dizzying display of geometric fractals that all illuminate - or at least are inspired by - concepts of black holes, string theory, and the "Big Bang." The garden features five major areas connected by a number of man-made lakes, bridges and other architectural works, including large white staircases and terraces that zigzag down a green hillside, representing the story of the creation of the universe.

Jencks continued work on the garden through 2007. Today, it is open to the public one day a year through the Scotland's Gardens Scheme and helps to raise money for Maggie's Centres, a cancer care foundation named after Jenck's late wife. 

A unique and compelling narrative of one of the most important gardens in Europe designed by the internationally celebrated architecture critic and designer, Charles Jencks. This garden combines landscape design with science and philosophy and is shown through year-round photography, bringing his garden Fractals and black holes abound, so be careful where you tread! Even thelandscaping explores the mysteries of science. The garden comes replete with elegant manmade lakes which were designed by Maggie Keswick. The natural features of the garden blend and bond beautifully with the arches, contours, curls and bends of the science represented here. SyMany people wish the garden was open for more than one twenty four hour period each year – but at the end of the day it is a private garden created by private individuals. All is not lost, however. It seems that recently, Mr Jencks met with Professors Peter Higgs and Rolf-Dieter Heuer. The latter is the Director General of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. We know it as CERN, the place with that big collider thingamajig.

The two scientists hope that they may be able to replicate the Garden of Cosmic Speculation at CERN, or at least something very much like it. You can hardly blame them for wanting to reproduce something so stunning for more public viewingmmetry, chaos and the tumult of nature and science combined.

You will find all sorts of thought provoking objects to arouse your sense of wonder in this thirty acre microcosm of the universe. Many ideas come together to form a whole, complex and mystifying, cryptic but thrilling. If you find it all too much you can always spend a while in the Nonsense Pavilion.

Such is the way that people are enthralled by the garden it has even been immortalised in an orchestral composition by US composer Michael Gandolfi and recorded by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.The garden is open this year on May 2. Get there at the crack of dawn, however if you are thinking of paying a visit. Each year the local roads come to a virtual standstill by midmorning, such is the interest generated by this wonderful place.