Garden of Cosmic Speculation
The park is named “The Garden of Cosmic Speculation,” and it is designed with ideas in mind—and to provoke thought (or at least speculation) about the very nature of things in Scotland in 1989.Charles Jencks and his late wife Maggie Keswick created the garden, which is located at Portrack House near Dumfries.
Tremendous spiralling mounds rising several stories high portray the “science of complexity.” The Universe Cascade is a series of steps ascending from a giant pond, which signifies the unfolding of the universe across billions of years. A tennis court is named “The Sense of Fair Play,” and a forest nested by noisy crows is called “The Garden of Taking Leave of Your Senses.”
The Garden of Cosmic Speculation is a 30 acre sculpture garden located at Portrack House, near Dumfries in South West Scotland.
Since it only welcomes visitors for five hours a year, the Garden of Cosmic Speculation in southwest Scotland’s Borders region has taken on a magical aura. Despite massive crowds that would make a Chelsea football game seem insignificant, I’m happy I made it there to see this beautiful garden designed by landscape architect Charles Jencks and his late wife, Maggie Keswick.
The timing of the opening from midday until 17.00 (when the light is not at its best for photography); the massive crowds (all as determined as I was to see this garden phenomenon); and the “iffy” weather with intermittent heavy, dark clouds, except for the first ten minutes of my visit, combined to make photography incredibly challenging. We nevertheless want to convey at least a sense of this magnificent garden with the aid of my son, who is studying architecture at the university and who is both armed with a camera and a long trip from southern England.
The 30 acres of grounds surrounding Portrack, a Georgian farmhouse constructed in 1815 in Dumfries, Scotland, serve as the Garden of Cosmic Speculation. When he first met Maggie Keswick in the 1970s, her parents were already residing on the property, and Charles Jencks became acquainted with it. He and Maggie got married in 1978 and eventually moved into Portrack, but it wasn’t until 1988 that construction on the current garden began. They collaborated to develop the garden, which is currently only available once a year during Scotland’s Gardens on the first Sunday in May and is known as Portrack Garden.
