{"id":186602,"date":"2010-01-15T17:54:33","date_gmt":"2010-01-15T22:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"1701 at http:\/\/atlasobscura.com"},"modified":"2010-01-15T17:54:33","modified_gmt":"2010-01-15T22:54:33","slug":"garden-of-cosmic-speculation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/186602","title":{"rendered":"Garden of Cosmic Speculation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/atlasobscura.com\/globe\/europe\/uk\/scotland\">Scotland<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/atlasobscura.com\/globe\/europe\/uk\">U.K.<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/atlasobscura.com\/categories\/architectural-oddities\/arborsculpture-topiary-and-horticultural-curiousities\">Horticultural Marvels<\/a><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Located at their private residence, Portrack House, near Dumfries, Scotland, the garden&#8217;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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps viewed as an unconventional approach to landscaping, the garden features a dizzying display of geometric fractals that all illuminate &#8211; or at least are inspired by &#8211; concepts of black holes, string theory, and the &#8220;Big Bang.&#8221; 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.<\/p>\n<p>Jencks continued work on the garden through 2007. Today, it is open to the public one day a year through the Scotland&#8217;s Gardens Scheme and helps to raise money for Maggie&#8217;s Centres, a cancer care foundation named after Jenck&#8217;s late wife.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/static.atlasobscura.com\/files\/imagecache\/place_main\/place_images\/2483476571_a6f39ca874-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\"  width=\"280\" height=\"181\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scotland, U.K. | Horticultural Marvels 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&#8217;s design is guided by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186602\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}