I was in Eden today. That’s a fabulous garden in deepest Cornwall, featuring local flora as well as a mediterranean climate area and a tropical rain forest.
The Eden Project started in 1999 and used the site of a old worn-out clay pit as its base. Prior to its physical start, the founder of the project and numerous others had been planning for around three preceding years, not least how to get the funding for this imaginative plan.
This whole project is an example of ‘can-do’ attitude, with the future minded project team taking a 60m deep area the size of 35 soccer pitches and persuading all manner of folk to give time and money to the work. The ‘I’m glad I did’ rather than ‘I wish I had’ form of persuasion worked well. Whatever the weather, Eden is a place to visit.
Two of the most spectacular parts of the site are the huge biomes (huge geodesic dome structures), one for the mediterranean zone and another for the tropical rain forest. There’s a third biome for the natural climate of the area, which doesn’t need a dome, of course.
An enjoyable day can be spent browsing the terrain and the various plants. There’s tea being grown in the open climate of Cornwall; in the mediterranean section (which also features the corresponding latitudes of California) there are the fruits and leaves of fine perfumes and in the rain forest there are the huge plants that grow in secluded tropical islands as well as coffee plants, bananas and mangoes.
Mainly the plants are not rare varieties, but many are completed with stories and points to think. The mango as an exotic to the UK but a famine relief fruit in its native land. The coffee only retrieving 7% of its value in its native habitat.
So enjoy the experience but also think about our fragile earth.
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