Scotland The Garden of Cosmic Speculation1

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Scotland
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The Garden of Cosmic Speculation
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The wonderfully named Garden of Cosmic
Speculation at Portrack House (near Dumfries) in
Scotland was created by renowned landscape
architect and theorist Charles Jencks (1939 -
2019) and Maggie Keswick, his wife. This quirky
and unusual garden takes its inspiration largely
from cosmology and mathematics. Open to the
public once a year through Scotland's Gardens
Scheme, the work includes an intricate system of
lakes and causeways designed by Maggie and a 55ft
double-helix shaped mountain of grass designed by
Charles
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Garden of Cosmic Speculation The Sycamore Black
Hole Terrace The presence of a terrace is for
the purpose of showing the space and time
distortion which is yielded by a black hole
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The Black Hole Terrace
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Garden of Cosmic Speculation The Black Hole
Terrace The couple chose their home, Portrack
House, to be the location for their dream and
planned the garden carefully. They met with
scientists and horticulturists, in order to come
up with a design of a landscape, that would blend
nature, science, and art. The sculptured garden
is a representation of an unconventional approach
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The masterpiece that they created features
landscape and sculptures based on the Big Bang,
geometric fractals, twisting DNA helixes, and
black holes
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Located near Dumfries, South-west Scotland, the
sculpture garden covers 30 acres and has an
unusual design, which was inspired by
contemporary cosmology, just like much of Charles
Jencks works Garden of Cosmic Speculation The
Black Hole Terrace
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Garden of Cosmic Speculation The Black Hole
Terrace
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On the Black Hole Terrace, a 20th century sort of
ha-ha has been created. Ha-ha is a landscape
design element that creates a vertical barrier
preserving an uninterrupted view of the landscape
beyond
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Garden of Cosmic Speculation The Black Hole
Terrace
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Garden of Cosmic Speculation The symmetry break
terrace
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The Symmetry Break plots the history of the
universe from an original point through the curve
of space-time The symmetry break
terrace Geometric bands of grass on a symbolic
scale (symmetry breaking is a phenomenon in
physics )
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Garden of Cosmic Speculation The symmetry break
terrace
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Garden of Cosmic Speculation Comet Bridge
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Comet Bridge
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Garden of Cosmic Speculation Comet Bridge
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A walk takes the visitors on a journey to the
smallest building blocks of matter, and a series
of landforms and lakes recall fractal
geometry. Definition Non-regular geometric
shapes that have the same degree of
non-regularity on all scales.
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Garden of Cosmic Speculation is a private garden
built by Charles Jencks and his wife in Portrack
House, Dumfries, Scotland. Its design was
influenced by Chinese garden philosophy. One of
its main features is long snaking curves and
waves that both satisfied the couples love for
Chinese landscape painting and complemented the
Scottish hills around them
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The Snake and Snail Mound - slug lakes - Garden
of Cosmic Speculation
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The centrepiece of the garden is undoubtedly the
complex of sinuous waveforms created by the Snail
Mound, the Snake Mound and their related lakes. 
Jencks writes Curved and counter-curved shapes
are structural and often found in nature, for
instance in the meander of a river.  Waveforms
underlie so many natural activities sea waves,
of course, and sand forms left by the incessant
waves on the ocean beach the vortices caused by
pulling a solid object through stationary liquid
the swirls of air currents where warm and cold
air meet and the rock curls evident in
mountains, a result of a long, slow geological
process of movement.
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The Snake and Snail Mound and the 'Causeway'
bisecting the ponds in Charles Jencks' Garden of
Cosmic Speculation
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Garden of Cosmic Speculation - Snail Mound, the
Snake Mound and their related lakes
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The Garden of Cosmic Speculation The Snail
Mound
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The Garden of Cosmic Speculation began to take
shape when the couple dug out a lake for their
children to swim in, sculpting the resulting
mound of earth in a double helix the basic form
of DNA and calling it the Snail Mound
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To relate the mound to the water was designed the
tail of the snail in the shape of a French curve
and brought it over the deep part of the pond
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Drawing of the Snake and Snail Mounds lakes and
waves
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The Sense of Twist of the Snake and Snail Mounds
lakes and waves allows visitors to explore and
learn about Fibonacci sequence. Even though this
masterpiece is not home to plant diversity, still
its snail-like curves and symmetry are greatly
appealing
The Garden of Cosmic Speculation Scottish
Bloodline (row of trees)
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Snake and Snail Mounds lakes and waves and
Scottish Bloodline (row of trees)
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Snail Mounds and the lakes. The 'Causeway'
bisects the ponds
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Snail Mounds and the lakes
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The Snake and Snail Mound - Garden of Cosmic
Speculation
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The Snake and Snail Mound - Garden of Cosmic
Speculation
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The Snake and Snail Mound - Garden of Cosmic
Speculation
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The Snake and Snail Mound - Garden of Cosmic
Speculation
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The Snake and Snail Mound - Garden of Cosmic
Speculation
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The Snake and Snail Mound - Garden of Cosmic
Speculation
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The garden is open to visitors one day only,
through the Gardens program of Scotland. After
Maggie was diagnosed with inoperable cancer in
1993, the couple founded the network of Maggies
Cancer Caring Centres that has continued to grow
and develop since her death in 1995.  The annual
opening of the garden helps raise money for the
Maggies Centres
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The Snake and Snail Mound - Garden of Cosmic
Speculation
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The Snake and Snail Mound - Garden of Cosmic
Speculation
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The Red Bridge
To Jencks, the dug up earth provided an
opportunity not just to shape the landscape, but
to invent a new grammar of landscape design
inspired by animistic Chineses geomancy
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The Snail Mound - Garden of Cosmic Speculation
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The Time Garden- Garden of Cosmic Speculation
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The Time Garden- Garden of Cosmic Speculation
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The Willowtwist, a structure made from one single
long sheet of aluminum, cut and split twice to
form a series of intertwined loops, reminiscent
of David Nashs living Ash Dome
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The Willow twist - Garden of Cosmic Speculation
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The Willow twist - Garden of Cosmic Speculation
Jencks makes use of one of the new scientific
theories as well, the theory of complexity, which
states that everything is "selforganizing and
harmonic
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Presentation Sanda Foisoreanu
2020
Sound Pat Metheny Group - Here To Stay
(We Live Here)
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