The Garden of Cosmic Speculation by Charles Jencks, Frances Lincoln, 拢35, ISBN 0711222169 Reviewed by Elizabeth Sourbut
DESIGNER Charles Jencks and his late wife Maggie Keswick had a vision of their garden as a microcosm of the multiverse. Gardens are shaped and cultivated spaces after all, created to stimulate the senses and encourage reflection on the natural world. Beginning in 1988 they worked to mould the gardens at Portrack in southern Scotland into a new kind of formal garden, drawing inspiration from the sciences of complexity and cosmology. They shaped the land into lakes and mounds that twist back on themselves in self-similar waves. Sculptures abound: twists of DNA in the herb garden and the particle tracks from a cloud chamber made solid in steel.
It鈥檚 a fascinating conceit, put together with enormous care and thought. This garden succeeds in marrying cutting-edge science with global traditions of formal gardens. Many scientists, including Roger Penrose and James Watson, have helped to shape its underlying symmetries. In Jencks鈥檚 narrative, the practical issues of design intersect with personal history, and both are reflected in the overall public aspect of the garden. Prose and lavish illustrations complement one another on every page of The Garden of Cosmic Speculation. As a brave and thoughtful experiment in the study of nature in all its aspects, both book and garden are well worth lingering over.
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