The slate garden at CERN is located in the courtyard of the main building, between the User’s Office and “Restaurant One”. There is a sign posted on one of the pillars that reads,
The slate blackboard has always been a faithful companion of physicists seeking to understand the mysteries of the universe. CERN’s Slate Garden is designed as a homage to these sleuths of the invisible. With its one hundred slate tablets arranged in concentric rings, the Slate Garden echoes the architecture of a silicon strip tracker, a detector used to reconstruct the tracks of particles. Several varieties of flowering plants are arrayed around the garden. They blossom at different times and form a vibrant floral crown that changes with the seasons.
Artist: Laurent Essig, Belandscape.ch
Though my cell phone photos don’t do it justice, it’s actually quite beautiful, take a look!
Melissa Valdez, MSc 