I have had the most amazing time today in The Garden of Cosmic Speculation, designed by Charles Jencks and his late wife Maggie Keswick. I have already written one blog about it which you can read here.
The garden is the result of many years of dialogue between Charles, Maggie and many of the world’s leading thinkers, scientists and philosophers of chaos and complexity theory, biology, chemistry, quantum physics and cosmology, people like Lee Smolin, Paul Davies, Brian Goodwin, Stuart Kauffman, Brain Greene and many more.
I did have the opportunity to meet Charles, and exchange a few ideas with him. I told him that I teach chaos and complexity theory to business students, and that my Masters Degree was from Schumacher College, where Brian Goodwin had taught until his death in 2009. He knows the college well, and he had also met Ernst Schumacher, author of Small is Beautiful who the college is named after.
Myself with Charles Jencks
I did try and express some thoughts about the garden in this video below so have a look.
I also tried making the same video in a different location, which you can see at the bottom of this post. The garden is only open for 5 hours on the first Sunday of each May, so it was with great luck that I happened to be in Dumfries this year to experience its magic and wonder. Here are some of the best photos I took. Enjoy : )
Strange Attractors
Fractal Path and Bridge
Spiral Mound
Black Hole
Fractal Bridge
Polarities
DNA Garden
Cascading Universe
Bridge over the River Nith
Looking Across to the Comet Bridge
Sculpture
Statue under the Helix
Plants in the Time Garden
Looking down the Cascading Universe
Me : )
Great pictures, Thank You!
I love your blog post!! So interesting and amazing you got to meet him, I never even knew he was wandering about, wish we knew
p.s. loved your video too and thanks for liking my photos, what a great day it was xx Strawberry Anarchy xx
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How do you get tickets to see the garden?
Hi Juliet
As far as I know you can not buy tickets in advance. When you go to the gardens you can park your car and then wait in line to go in. People arrive around 11 to get in at 12 to maximise their time there. I can not ever see a time when people would not be let in due to the gardens being too full, since not many people know about them and they are never that busy. This year I think the cost was £5 or £6 per adult but I don’t remember exactly.