Birthday
HydrangeasIn Scotland there is a garden where the hills take the form of waves, a staircase tells the story of the universe and the beds are devoted to DNA. This is the Garden of Cosmic Speculation, created by architectural theorist Charles Jencks. Here is how it came about and what you can see there.
Your own small garden at home: potted plants delivered in Kyiv.
How the garden began
Charles Jencks (1939–2019) was an American architect and theorist, one of the leading voices of postmodernism in architecture. From the late 1980s, together with his wife, the landscape designer and garden historian Maggie Keswick, he transformed the grounds of her family home, Portrack House near Dumfries, into an extraordinary park. Maggie died in 1995, but Jencks carried on the work for many years. Her name lives on in Maggie’s, the network of cancer support centres she conceived.
What is in the garden
The garden covers about 30 acres (around 12 hectares). Almost every corner illustrates a scientific idea: landforms and ponds evoke fractals and waves, the DNA Garden the double helix, the Universe Cascade of steps the stages of cosmic history from the Big Bang to today, and the Black Hole Terrace the warping of space by gravity. Plants are not the stars here but part of the whole picture.
Can you visit?
The garden is private and usually opens to the public just one day a year through Scotland’s Gardens charity open-garden scheme. Dates are announced in advance and tickets sell quickly. The rest of the time it can only be seen in photographs and in Jencks’s book about it.
An idea for your own garden
Jencks’s scale is impossible to copy, but his principle — a garden that tells a story — works on a small plot too. A spiral bed, a winding path or a wave-shaped mound turns an ordinary lawn into a narrative. Similar geometric patterns appear in nature itself — see geometry in nature.
Discover more remarkable gardens in famous gardens of the world and hedge mazes of the world.
FAQ
Where is the Garden of Cosmic Speculation?
At Portrack House near Dumfries in south-west Scotland.
Who created it?
Architectural theorist Charles Jencks with his wife, Maggie Keswick.
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Author: Maria Svitlovir
Graduated from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Institute of Biology and Medicine (2001). BSc in Biology, MSc in Horticulture. Writes about plants, works at a garden centre selecting and repotting plants, and contributes to plant reference guides.
