The Garden of Cosmic Speculation is the brainchild of architect and architectural critic Charles Jencks and his late wife Maggie Keswick, an expert on Asian garden design. Open to the public only once a year, the 30-acre garden is on Jencks’s private estate in Scotland. It took nearly two decades to complete.

Why It’s Unique: It is not unusual for science to inspire artists, but when that inspiration takes shape as spiraling landforms, double-helix staircases and intricate floral arrangements, the results are outstanding. Pyramid-like landscapes reflecting in a still pond elicit thoughts of parallel universes and swirling mounds of earth look like grassy black holes. Bridges, streams, fences and other installations divide the garden into several areas and link them together. Jencks’s interest in exploring modern physics is not limited to the Garden of Cosmic Speculation, as many of his landscapes morph space and perspective.

Source:  The Dirt

The TEDx conference on the Oil Spill in Washington, D.C. featured a full-day of world renowned speakers on oil science, conservation, and the future of energy. During the day’s discussions, one powerful statement seemed to come through: the decision to use oil dispersants, which are themselves highly toxic derivatives of oil, may have been misguided. While the dispersants helped break up some oil and may have prevented oil from slicking some wetland and other important coastal ecosystems, they are also creating a toxic ocean soup that can’t be separated into disparate parts. The oil, dispersants and sea in areas of the Gulf of Mexico are now like permanently mixed salad dressing. As a result, oil now can’t be manually scooped out, and the dispersants and oil mix will be absorbed into all nodes of the ocean ecosystems, creating catastrophic impacts for ocean wildlife.

Beautiful day touring a Peony Nursery in Western Minnesota.

http://dirt.asla.org/2010/06/01/damage-to-gulf-of-mexico-ecosystem-grows/

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