The Eden Project, St Austell, Cornwall

The project caught my mother’s eye when she first heard Tim Smit give a lecture in Penzance about his dream – his proposal for an amazing garden project in Cornwall. The wheels started to turn .. researching, planning and design, funding, a place for it to be built .. enlisting the help of friends, consultants, business partners etc ..

The Eden Project was born .. and we were hooked into following its annual incremental explosion of growth .. plants, buildings, ideas .... and so from the late 1990s we have been visiting together, or separately and watched his bigger dream of a theatre of living plants and people take place .. which just happened to be being created in an abandoned china clay pit!

Can you see the bee in the picture? There are wonderful sculptural, artistic touches everywhere ...

In 1987 this charismatic maverick of the world – he’d read Archaeology and Anthropology at university, worked for ten years in the music industry as composer/producer in both rock music and opera – moved his family to Cornwall where he and John Nelson together ‘discovered’ and then restored the 12th century Lost Gardens of Heligan (post sometime soon).

Eden began as a dream in 1995 and opened its doors to the public in 2000, since when more than 8 million people have come to see what was once a sterile kaolin pit turned into a cradle of life containing world-class horticulture and startling architecture symbolic of human endeavour.

Eden has contributed over £800 million into the Cornish economy. It is also proud of its success in changing people’s perception of the potential for and the application of science, by communicating and interpreting scientific concepts through the use of art, drama and storytelling as well as living up to its mission to take a pivotal role in local regeneration. It demonstrates once and for all that sustainability is not about sandals and nut cutlets, it is about good business practice and the citizenship values of the future.

Set out below are the first two paragraphs of an excellent article, written by Richard Cree, which appeared in the January 2009 Director magazine:

Unconventional, passionate and visionary... Tim Smit, the inspiration behind the Eden Project, has never played the corporate game. Here he talks about the rise of social enterprise, renewable energy and where the blames lies for the financial crisis.

Despite its integration into mainstream politics, there's still something about environmentalists that suggests sandal-wearing cranks, trying to save the planet through knitting and lentils. Tim Smit, founder and chief executive of the Eden Project, seems to enjoy the non-conformist stereotype. Within a 45-minute conversation, the brains behind Cornwall's eco-tourism success story claims that banking non-executive directors "should be facing criminal charges" and that the big four accountancy firms should be "facing charges of treason".

There are two covered biomes at the bottom of the pit – the Rainforest Biome, which is the largest greenhouse in the world, contains over 1,000 plant species covers 1.559 hectares (3.9 acres) and measures 180’ (55m) high, 328’ (100m wide) and 656’ (200m) long.

It is used for tropical plants, such as fruiting banana trees, coffee, rubber and giant bamboo and is kept at a tropical temperature. The fast-growing trees race up to the light. Climbers hitch a ride and orchids and ferns live high in the tree tops as do bats, birds, frogs, ants etc all part of the necessary bio system.

The Mediterranean Biome covers 0.654 hectares (1.6 acres) and measures 115 feet (35 m) high, 213 feet (65 m) wide and 443 feet (135 m) long. It houses familiar warm temperate and arid plants such as olives and grape vines, beneficial insects, lizards etc and various sculptures.
The Outdoor Biome (which is not covered) represents the temperate regions of the world with plants such as tea, lavender, hops, hemp and sunflowers.

There’s a theatre and an arena for staging various exhibitions, concerts, plays, while “The Core” is a new exhibition and learning centre. The Core takes it inspiration from the tree, with its central trunk and canopy roof that harvests the sun; and its form from nature’s fundamental growth blueprint. Opposing spirals are based on Fibonacci’s sequence: 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34 ... where every number is the sum of the previous two. Check out a pine cone, pineapple or sunflower .. they all follow the Fibonacci principle.

You approach the biomes from the fruit labelled car parks – apple, orange, banana etc - up high on the southern edge of the pit .. walk down (or there are plenty of people to help in all manner of ways .. little buggies, wheel chairs, mini buses etc) .. to the visitor centre – and as you walk through, completely hidden from you, this amazing panoramic vision greets you!

From here you can gaze at the biomes and when ready start wending your way down a twisting path through planted sides of the pits (or again there’s a little train to get you to the bottom). It is a staggering achievement, full of promise of more to come, they are always collaborating locally, within the UK and around the world to improve peoples’ lives .. working towards sustainability, while saving numerous plants from extinction .. eg protected species such as the rare Coco-De-Mer: see my post from the Seychelles.

Dear Mr Postman thank you for coming today - this is my mother's first day back at the Nursing Centre, Kestrel House, and she'll be pleased to hear about our visits to The Eden Project, as we had such interesting times. She will be much amused by a phrase in the Guide to the Eden project .. during it’s “Why we’re here (in a nutshell)” description, which says: "Yes, we want to live lightly on the planet, but with champagne in our veins" ... her favour tipple now-a-days is champers!! Sadly she’s nil by mouth ... it’s not easy ...

Hilary Melton-Butcher

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