Visitors to Britain, particularly those lucky enough to live here for a while, will know what a huge variety there is to explore in these small islands, and they may well have heard of the “eighth wonder of the world” stirring down in remote Cornwall. What is it about this place? How has The Eden Project, in just 18 months, become the top Landmark Millennium Project and one of the top three paid-for attractions in the UK, catching the imagination of the public and the media, nationally and internationally?

An archaeology graduate becomes professional musician, then record producer for the likes of Barry Manilow, and then retires to Cornwall to build a recording studio and find another way of life. Fast forward a year or two and Tim Smit stumbles upon the overgrown gardens of the Tremaine estate at Heligan near Mevagissey, and hacks his way in to a magical place untouched since the gardeners all went off to the first world war and never came back. The “lost” gardens of Heligan are found at last... it is 1990. Channel 4 films this unique discovery and he writes a best selling book of the amazing journey. The gardens open to the public in 1992 and the visitors flock in and a new phenomenon is born... “the garden restoration of the century” as The Times describes it.

Tim – no horticulturist – gets to learn much more about plants and in particular their importance to man. He also knows that Cornwall may ultimately become a depressed backwater unless it can come up with one or two world-class businesses to complement its unrivalled natural beauty.
Perhaps a place telling the story of man’s relationship with plants and the importance of that for the future of the planet could not only help save the world but also save tourism in Cornwall. Small ambitions! And so The Eden Project was born – the local council stumped up £25,000 of seedcorn funding – backing Tim’s track record at Heligan – and others gave freely of their time and experience to try to bring this hare-brained plan to fruition. Eventually on 17 May 1997 the announcement of an MC grant of £37.15 million came through – now they just had to find the other £37.15m to match it ! And that’s another story for another time.

The Eden Project is many things – a global garden for the 21st Century, a gateway to a sustainable future and a dramatic setting in which to showcase the fascinating story of mankind’s dependence on plants. It is rapidly becoming a unique resource for education and home to our Foundation for the Future – a place where our partners in academia and the commercial world will be able to hold conversations about the future which might lead somewhere.
This “Living Theatre of Plants and People” is a vibrant reminder of our place in nature and is a living demonstration of regeneration. In a couple of short years the team have transformed an exhausted clay pit into a stunning lost world reminding us of what we ‘ordinary’ people can do once we set our minds to it.
The Humid Tropics Biome is where visitors can experience the sights, smells and sheer scale of the rainforest in the world’s largest greenhouse. 55m high and with a footprint of four acres this rainforest cathedral is a miracle of engineering with no internal supports whatsoever. It displays the tropical plants found in the products we use every day and explains the ways in which they are being managed for a positive future.
In the Warm Temperate Biome visitors can travel to South Africa and California and walk amongst orange and lemon trees, old olive groves and gnarled vines. They can investigate the cork popping present and glimpse the futures of naturally coloured cottons and new tastes and new ideas.
And in the Roofless Biome – the 30 acres of Eden which are outdoors – the crescent-shaped terraces tell the story of plants that have changed the world and which could change all our futures. Hemp and sunflowers are growing here under the warm Cornish sun. Tea too.

Perhaps “zeitgeist”... catching the spirit of the times. A project based firmly on the three rocks of education, the environment and the quest for a sustainable future for all seems to “fit” as we turn into a new century and a new millennium. The timing couldn’t have been better. Scale and audacious ambition – the vision and scale and iconic architecture all immediately marked Eden out as something to watch. There was no point in building a quite big destination with a vaguely interesting ambition – we had to reach for the stars.

An idea! We never understood, nor were interested in, the comparisons with “the other dome” but the difference is obvious – Eden began with an idea which needed domes to work whereas at Greenwich the dome structure came first and then there was that manic struggle to fill it with something interesting – indeed something the government told us we would like! Eden was never like that. Ownership by the community. Nobody loved the other Dome – it belonged to no-one. Eden is owned by the people of Cornwall and the vast majority of those who have walked through its gates and felt that special personal affiliation with the place.
And finally – the team. Committed, energetic, hugely talented and, until recently, underpaid. The management team are famously dynamic in their oddly maverick way. The horticultural team are the best in the world – a blend of old guns from Kew and Wisley and young guns who now actually run the place. “Education by visionaries” is how The Times editorial famously described the talents of the education team.

No matter how successful the Eden Project becomes, as a visitor destination or in fulfilling all its ambitions, it will represent nothing of real value if it has not made a lasting impression on the economy of Cornwall and the far South West – all the public funding and all the private support, all the work, blood, sweat and tears will have been worth nothing.
At the end of this 2002 “season” (though Eden doesn’t really have seasons) there are 652 staff – three years ago there were 30. Then there is the money we spend with local suppliers which last year amounted to nearly £8million and which this year will approach £10m. Wherever possible we source locally, though naturally sometimes we are forced to go further afield. But that’s just our immediate effect on our own suppliers – what of the Eden effect across the region in general?
Independent research in 2001, using the Cambridge computer model, suggested an economic impact in the eight months to end of November 2001 of £111 million in Cornwall. This was later “annualised” to £150m and has just been updated for 2002 to £162m. Over ten years that will approach £2 billion additional income for Cornwall’s economy. Our public and private funders have been paid back big time.
These pages cannot begin to do justice to this phenomenon nor capture the strange beauty of Cornwall overall. If you get the chance to come down don’t miss it. We’d love to see you!