Vivendo Discimus: Everything in the garden is magnifique for the anniversary celebrations of a great Scot

Lots of his ideas, like the need for urban structures to provide for physical and spiritual human needs, and his thoughts on sustainable development strike a strong chord today.

Below we reproduce extracts from an article in the September 2004 edition of Leopard Magazine.

"The world is mainly a vast leaf-colony, growing on and forming a leafy soil, not a mere mineral mass, and we live not by the jingling of our coins, but by the fullness of our harvests. This is a green world, with animals comparatively few and small, and all dependent upon the leaves. By leaves we live."

From "Patrick Geddes – a man ahead of his time." by Mindy Grewar

The words above are of a man, born in rural 19th-century Ballater, who became an international giant and seeded hope for the future. Sir Patrick Geddes – scientist, educator, town planner, cultural champion –was compared to da Vinci and admired by Einstein.

Sheila Potter and her son Tom, distant relations of Geddes, and Kenny Munro, an East Lothian artist inspired by the man, rallied other interested Deesiders and laid plans to celebrate Geddes' life on his 150th birthday. For five years now, the Ballater Geddes Project 2004 has been exploring his ideas and applying them to local needs.

Patrick Geddes's humble origins did not suggest his eventual stature. His father was a regular soldier, Alexander Geddes (1808-1899). Alexander, a Gaelic-speaking Highlander, was orphaned when he was eight, then lived with his brother, herding sheep, and going to school in winter. A kirk elder, he served in Ballater as a sergeant major in the Black Watch. Patrick, born in 1854, was the last of five children, and his parents moved to Perth when he was three.

Patrick attended Perth Academy then, at 20, went to London to attend the Royal School of Mines. Here he was mentored by the influential biologist Thomas Huxley, a supporter of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Patrick's research on protozoa soon attracted attention. "I have read several of your biological papers with very great interest," Darwin wrote, "and I have formed, if you will permit me to say so, a high opinion of your abilities."

At 25, Patrick was asked to set up a zoological station at Stonehaven for Aberdeen University. He later joined a scientific expedition to Mexico, but suffered an illness there which temporarily blinded him. Prevented from using a microscope, he returned home to focus on a rather larger creature, mankind.

"Geddes' great achievement has been the making of a bridge between Biology and Social Science," wrote his biographer Lewis Mumford. His idea now seems simple: just like plants and other animals, people thrive in healthy conditions. Patrick considered how people could improve these conditions and in so doing, established town planning.

By now with a wife and young family, Patrick was living in poor accommodation in the centre of Edinburgh. He designed new housing, organising neighbours to build gardens and renovate houses. Today one of his most comprehensive projects, the Ramsay Gardens flats just below Edinburgh Castle, graces every postcard of the city's Royal Mile.

Working to his mottos, 'By creating, we think' and 'By living, we learn', Patrick integrated work by city craftsmen. He established the Outlook Tower, with a Camera Obscura, now a tourist attraction, and displays about the city, country, continent, and world arranged in widening circles, thus developing tenants' knowledge of their environment.

Patrick lectured on biology at Dundee and Edinburgh Universities, and associated with Charles Rennie Mackintosh, John Duncan, Sir J.C. Bose, Hugh MacDiarmid and Rabindranath Tagore.

"I have heard much praise from my friends concerning Mr Geddes's work and personality," Albert Einstein commented. "All who know him admire and honour him highly."

In such company, Patrick recognized a flowering of creativity and dubbed the later 19th century the Scottish Renaissance, publishing its highlights in "The Evergreen: A Northern Almanac". He toured the United States, Europe, the Holy Land and India to lecture, exhibit, and design towns. His ideas were novel: cities must be planned with respect to their surrounding villages, he said, in a 'conurbation'. Industrial development, if left unchecked, would damage the air, water and land upon which all life relies. Little wonder that today's environmentalists consider Patrick a prophet of land stewardship and sustainable activity.

By the time he died in France in 1932, Patrick had written about economics, sociology, history, art, museums, exhibitions, politics, literature, agriculture, gardening, geology, religion, philosophy, education, geography, science, astronomy, biology, planning, printing, mathematics, navigation, travel, public health, housing, music, and poetry. Weeks before his death he accepted a knighthood.

"Geddes was . . . what Leonardo (da Vinci) had been 400 years before: a prodigy in physical endurance, range of interests, and imaginative powers," concluded another biographer, Philip Boardman.

Apart from Ballater, this year has also seen events in India, a major exhibition in Edinburgh, the partial restoration of Geddes garden in Montpellier, France and the installation, there, of a bronze copy of his bust which resides in Scotland's National Portrait Gallery. In addition, the first annual Sir Patrick Geddes commemorative lecture was given in Edinburgh by the Chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission. A new book on his life and legacy has also been published.

(The author, Mindy Grewar, is a member of the Ballater Geddes Group and an arts development officer for Aberdeenshire Council, based in Stonehaven. She learned of Patrick Geddes while researching art history at Indiana University, where she found a copy of Evergreen in the library).