The Jumping Bridge "...jumps over two streams and dives into the ground. It is made from fractals that tilt against each other."
Just north of Dumfries lies Portrack House, here Charles Jencks and his wife Maggie Keswick took a traditional garden and made a place where landscape, gardens, architecture and highly abstract ideas meet, and in some cases collide. The gardens are open annually as part of Scotland's garden scheme, money from which goes to the 'Maggie Centres' started by the couple in 1995. Photos were taken in 1999 when a seemingly large number of people attended - some 400. A second visit in 2019 was in the company of over 4,000 people. 'Looking after' the gardens has now passed to John, the couple's son. This page shows a fraction of the garden, for more, and for the source of the quotations, please consult Charles Jencks' book:
The Garden of Cosmic Speculation.
Walkway which leads between the parts of the Jumping Bridge
At the centre of the bridge is a symmetrical seat...
...between the asymmetric rails of the bridge
"To relate the mound to the water we designed the tail of the snail in the shape of a French curve and brought it over the deep part of the pond"
The 'Causeway' bisects, and...
...the hook of the French Curve reaches into, the ponds
The serpent mound curves along beside the pond
Visitors admiring the serpent from the snail
Looking along the causeway with the snail centre and the serpent to the right
The head of the serpent
Fractal Terrace and Snail
By the entrance gate is the Fractal Terrace which starts in regular patterns (to the right above) leading from the rectangular wall beside it...
...and dissolves into the natural chaos on the garden side; then emerging from the grass as a line of teeth - just seen above to the right
Symmetry drawn from the word Ambiguity
Lilac coloured Rhodie
Complexity of the paving under the car port
The Time Walk, writes Jencks, "...emphasizes three different experiences: Cyclical Time ...Linear Time
...and Subjective Time."
A seat in the bluebell illustrates the way that the whole garden now has a greater play of more conventional planting giving context to the abstractions
The Double Nose surrounded by the smell of different thymes. And beyond it another Double, that of the Helix
The Symmetry Break plots the history of the universe from an original point through the curve of space-time
Black and white posts of the Time Walk which was created by the Jencks' daughter Lily
The Universe Cascade is one of the largest additions to the garden between 1999 and 2019, it symbolises the history of the universe in a series of steps.
"What does the universe look like?" Jencks asks. This cascade offers a sort of answer, with the main idea being "...the "jumping universe" as a cascade of steps..."
Brick wall with doors
and windows
Portrack House
Charles Jencks + walking stick
View of house across meadow
Black Hole - looking like a fish tail
Black Hole in 1999 with large tree...
...and again in 2019 with conifers
The Black Hole in dappled light given by the tree. The far curve symbolises the 'event horizon' what we see just outside a black hole, everything then disappears through the narrow neck and then becomes elongated 'inside' the hole. He writes "Swallowing, destroying, black, invisible, creating like a mother? Should we re-christen this pregnant void as a monster goddess..."
Trailers...
The next page
goes to the realisation of another architect's dream, Đặng Việt Nga's Crazy House in Đà Lạt.
The next page
of the Mosaic Section is headed:
'Flux'.
Or go to the contents of the Mosaic Section.
The last page took a walk beside the Swale at Muker
To a page on Scotland's Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh
To a page on the Jurong Gardens in Singapore
