Eden Project

We were really keen to visit the Eden Project while down in Cornwall and got there early to make most of it. In brief the Eden Project is an enormous demonstration garden constructed in an old china-clay pit mine. It features two enormous greenhouses one of which houses a rainforest, while the other a Mediterranean biome in which the W.Cape is represented remarkably well. We really enjoyed it, though were disappointed that it provided so little information on the Engineering and Botany of the site and project - which were the things we were most interested in! Read on for a more detailed account...

The Eden Project with its domed greenhouses

Where the Lost Gardens of Heligan were remarkable in recreating a forgotten period in time they had failed to truly allow for a place where people could be amazed by plants and rediscover the incredible connection humans have to nature and in particular its flora, and our dependance on it. The Eden project was launched by the founder members of the Heligan project to address this issue with a particular focus on educating people on where their food comes from. Using their extensive powers of persuasion they convinced a lot of people that this was a great idea and somehow turned a very far fetched concept into reality. The costs of the project, and the sheer audacity of the engineering undertaking are remarkable. And yet Eden remains a viable enterprise and is almost entirely self funded now.

Lucy in the Rainforest Dome

Looking down on the Rainforest from the deck near the top of the dome - those are full on trees down there - we're 40m off the ground!

Mediterranean Biome

Geoff really enjoyed the geodesic dome design of the greenhouses. They effectively created a hexagonal steel frame and inserted inflatable transparent pillows of air between the hexagons to create the roof cover. The greenhouses, or biomes as they are known, are temperature and humidity controlled. The rainforest was sitting at a balmy 29degC with 71% humidity when we left it - we were sweating in our jeans, yet it was a typically miserable 12 degrees outside.

Looking up at the viewing platform with the air vent ("petals") behind  in the roof

A sculpture of seed with Fibonacci sequence - that's 70 tonnes of Cornish Granite right there!

Plantwise we were not disappointed by the scale of the plants and the variety on offer, but felt let down that the signage was so generic and dumbed down. Ideal for little kids and laymen, but Lucy was getting fed-up that she couldn't correctly confirm the ID's of many plants, or their region of origin.

All in all an amazing day visit to see something totally different!!!