Return to Eden

It is May 2000 and I am stand up in a long line of chattering , excitable people wearing bloodless hard hat . This is not an hearing for a Village People tribute act , but the queue to board a makeshift train that will transport us to the edge of an worthless , sterile china clay quarry . Below us , rising from a pool of pallid grey slip , is what will eventually take its place as one of the wonders of the mod humankind , the Eden Project . The scene is breathtaking , otherworldly and improbable . No - one has seen anything quite like this before ; a sentiency of fear and prevision is tangible . Gigantic bubble - shaped social system , name to as biomes , are being put together by C of ant - sized prole . Within 12 months these gigantic hothouse will bid visitor the chance to commune with plant from across the tropic and temperate world , learning as they go . The project is remarkable , audacious and visionary . One can already tell this is a game - changing enterprise . My younger ego wonders if this is what the landscape painting might face like if Man were to go on the moon .

No one describes Eden better than its God Almighty , the incredible , inspiring , pert Tim Smit , a man one can not take heed to often enough . Every clip I hear him talk I finger empowered to change my world , accomplish more and trust in people . Here ’s how Tim describes what he and his dedicated team attain in a outback , unpromising , unloved clay pit in one of the poorest outposts of Europe :

tight forward 16 years and I am back at Eden . No pauperization for a hard hat this clip , not even a high visibility crown . Eden is maturing . No longer an unworthy duckling , the vast website sit within the landscape painting as if it were part of the very framework of Cornwall . Around the fringes of a huge amphitheatre , flow woodland are originate up , accentuating the play . A alive music phase has been added ( in 2002 ) and an educational marrow named the ‘ Core ’ ( opened in 2005 , shown in the foreground below ) . There are regal tree diagram where once there was only excavation spoil , rug of daffodils and crops of potato where there was no dry land to sustain life . The magnitude of what ’s been attain is hard to express in words . The most earnest advice I can offer is to go along and have Eden for yourself .

Eden ’s ambition does not begin and end here in Cornwall , or even in the UK . There are globose partnerships with organisations all around the humankind working on sustainability , biodiversity and greenish exercise . At the original site in St Austell there plans to cover a canopy walk through the hobo camp in the tropical biome and to establish the nation ’s first geothermic energy plant , render both heat for Eden and surplus electrical energy for the National Grid . Europe ’s first and only redwood forest is being planted using stock raise from tree diagram over 4,000 old age old growing on the west coast of the USA . There is talk of creating Eden Projects on every continent apart from Antarctica . Tim Smit is one of those illusionist that will only sleep when his time his up .

But what of the original Eden Project ? I was agreeably surprised to find that the experience remains as new and untarnished as it was on that first May daylight of the new millenium . The people working on site , from the madam gather up entree fee to the gentleman talking to visitors about the benefit of panela sugar ( an unrefined whole - cane product from Columbia ) , come along to be full of the same joie de vivre that I retrieve from the early age . The landscape painting around the biome is more satisfying and interesting now that it ’s mature , cleverly design so that there is sake during every season . And horticultural standards are high-pitched . A new site has been cleared for a National Collection of kniphofia ; there is a superb wildlife pond next to the Core and there are extensive displays of crops traditionally work in the balmy Cornish climate .

Art lovers will appreciate the wide diversity of sculpture at Eden , drift from a jumbo bee to ‘ Seed ’ by Peter Randall - Page , one of the largest works of art to be fashioned from a single slice of rock .

Fabulous flowers and luscious leaves abound in the rainforest biome

Fabulous flowers and luscious leaves abound in the rainforest biome

Visiting any attraction with children puts a different perspective on things , but Eden appeal effortlessly to all ages . My niece Martha , like the toddler in the picture above , spend hour run and make for in the willow tree wigwam alongside the main nerve pathway . A simple collaboration with nature and yet so lock for bright unseasoned idea . Meanwhile adults are able to sit in the sun and love proper Cornish pasty and locally brew drinks without a care in the earth . The inevitably extensive gift shop is well - tended and jam with full quality gifts and flora predominantly source from Cornwall and neighbouring Devon .

If I were to have any gripes with Eden they would be insignificant 1 . The entrance fee , at £ 25 for an grownup , is pricey if one is only to visit once . This can plainly be transferred into a season ticket provided one ticks the Gift Aid box seat , making it awing note value for potential Eden addicts like myself . Plant labelling in the biomes is patchy and tends to highlight only a handful of key plants valued commercially . However Eden is about gentleman’s gentleman ’s family relationship with plants and how that might be sustained , not about botany . I am more than happy to waive a few name ticket for emit the same humid air as the plants that make up the big captive rainforest in the globe .

In the fifteen years since it open formally Eden has lost nothing of its magic trick . The feet and hand of millions of visitor have served only to polish this gem so that it sparkles like a infield where once there was only lifeless clay . Neither has my sensory faculty of awe decrease , and I expect it will not from my next until my very last visit .

Photo: Eden Project / Tamsyn William