Open to the public only one day a year, the Garden of Cosmic Speculation takes science and maths as its inspiration. Quite simply, there isn’t another garden like it in the world.
The shapes of science and nature come together in this wondrous place. The steel curves of science stand in front of those provided so generously by nature. Yet in a small time you can find yourself face to face with the wonders of a black hole.
The garden was set up by Charles Jencks, together with his late wife Maggie Keswick and is located at Portrack House near Dumfries. That’s in Scotland, by the way! It was set up in 1989 without the usual ideas people have when they create a garden. Horticultural displays very much take second place in this garden. Instead, it is designed with ideas in mind – and to provoke thought (or at least speculation) about the very nature of things.
The garden can be found at the base of these marvellous steps leading down from the
original eighteenth century manor house with a Victorian addition, an octagonal folly-library.
Around the garden one can find amazing sculptures on themes such as this - the DNA helix in giganitic metallic glory.
The snail mound allows visitors to explore for themselves the Fibonacci sequence of numbers that make up a shell or at least feel it beneath their feet.
However, are you interacting with
it or is that the other way around?
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. Symmetry, chaos and the tumult of nature and science combined.
Many 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 viewing.
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 (above).
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.
Kuriositas would like to that
Flickr User Paulus Maximus! for his very generous permission to allow us to use his pictures here. Please take a look at his photo sets.
Try something now thatwill make youwonder as much...
This is a beautifully made animated short with a twist in its tail. You do have to watch it from beginning to end and once you do it will leave you somewhat nonplused perhaps.
ALMA
A little girl stumbles across a doll shop that has, in its window, a doll that looks incredibly like herself. What happens next? You have to watch it to find out
This guy may sound like an extra from one of the Harry Potter films, but you may want to take a look at the plucky, somewhat amazing..
A record breaking bird for all the right reasons. That is over at our sibling site,
The Ark In Space.
8 comments:
this garden is awesome!
büyüleyici!
iii LoVe iT!!!
Absolutely fantastic. I'm going there!
So awesome! Talk about Alice in wonderland. I half expected to see the mad hatter in one ofthe photos. Great stuff
Wonderfully whimsical and one of a kind. Would love to visit, but it might take some planning to arrive the one day it is open.
How fun. Wouldn't it be cool to have some of this in our own yards.
http://www.yellowbluedesigns.com
Get there early! It's not the best way to contemplate the Universe with thousands of other visitors milling around.
It's a different world. Marvellous.
You are right in saying "Try something now that will make you wonder as much..."
Thanks
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