Eden Project

9 Apr

Several massive greenhouse domes in the middle of Cornwall gives us a glimpse into what our world could be

The amazing experience of discovering climates from around the world in one place through the use of technology and a wish to demonstrate how we can all play our part in creating a better planet.

What is the Eden Project

The Eden Project can probably be best described as a global garden that lives in tropical biomes. This enclosed botanical habitat, or greenhouse, is the world’s largest and is clearly a modern take on the Garden of Eden. But this place is so amazing and awe inspiring that several have called it the Eighth Wonder of the World. Except that it isn’t really a wonder because we know exactly how it works.

Home to a massive indoor rainforest, the Eden Project has an incredible selection of plants, over 1000 varieties.

Because when you’re inside the biome, you’re literally in a greenhouse, don’t be surprised to find temperatures between 18 and 35 degrees Celsius. This is so the environment is warm enough to replicate climates like those you would find along the equator, like South America, Southeast Asia and even West Africa.

The Eden Project is a pretty amazing place, especially when you consider everything they do to try and spread awareness of our impact on the planet and how we can all work towards a sustainable future. And for this they were awarded the ‘Best UK Leisure Attraction’ for five years in a row. Now you definitely have to be doing something right if you’re winning an award for five years in a row.

The Visit Cornwall website describes their top tourist attraction like this:

More than just a huge, tropical garden, Eden is a gateway into the relationships between plants and people, and a fascinating insight into the story of mankind’s dependence on plant life.

As an ‘education charity and social enterprise’ the Eden Project is becoming a great source of education and knowledge of how we can build that sustainable future we all wish to be living in.

Here’s what the Eden Project believes it’s purpose to be:

Our global mission is to create a movement that builds relationships between people and the natural world to demonstrate the power of working together for the benefit of all living things.

Sounds like a pretty great mission and purpose to me.

The Eden Project also hopes to

…inspire citizenship over consumption in order to care for this planet, Spaceship Earth, our only home, that provides us – and all life – with fresh air, clean water, fertile soil, rich biodiversity, a stable climate and an awesome recycling system.

And you know what they’re not wrong. With all our fancy technology and gizmos, no one’s been able to find a planet better suited to breathing than Earth. And since it’s the only one we’ve got, we kinda have to make it last. And it’s not as if we even need to do anything. Just be kind to the planet and it will be kind to us by allowing us to keep living. It’s as simple as that.

So in order to achieve this the Eden Project collaborates with other organisations to spread the word, spread awareness, spread education on how we can all, in our own tiny little ways, make the world a much nicer place to live.

How it began

So how did this whole endeavour begin in the first place? For that, we’ll have to go back to the 90s. It was in 1995, when a china clay pit had come to the end of its economic life and was no longer needed. But while most saw just a hole in the ground, a remarkable duo that went by Tim Smit and Jonathan Ball, saw something a little different.

As with all great ideas, a pub napkin is the canvas on which the very first designs of the Eden Project were drawn. By this stage its 1996, and the architect firm Grimshaw have boarded the Eden train, helping to evolve the plan into the giant bubbles the Eden Project looks like today.

But the one thing Smit and Ball know is that to make this project work, they’re going to need space, a lot of space, and this is when they buy the old clay pit, giving it a second life. It was into this pit that they decided to

[bring] a huge diversity of plants that we use every day but often don’t get to see, planted in soil made from ‘waste’ materials, watered by the rain, in giant conservatories and buildings that drew inspiration from nature.

This is how they were able to recreate habitats from all over the world and put them in the world’s largest greenhouse.

But the main construction wasn’t exactly easy. It’s now 1998 and for the first few months of construction it rained every day, meaning that the pit that was previously dry was now like a dam. And because the pit sits 15 metres below the water table it filled up fast, so a special drainage system was needed to keep the water out. But once they got going, things really took off.

They even set world records. In order to build the domes, they ended up having to use over 370 kilometres worth of scaffolding earning them a place in the Guinness Book of Records. Now that’s pretty impressive. They also had to hire specially trained climbers, who called themselves ‘the Sky Monkeys’ to build the domes.

The whole thing, the entire Eden Project ended up costing £141 million to build. And raising this amount of money would not have been possible without the help from a series of government grants, loans, and European regeneration funds. But in the end it was all worth it, because by 2000 everything had been built and paid for, meaning that tourists could start visiting and revitalise Cornwall’s economy at the same time. Which I think we can safely say it did with over £1 billion having been put back into the local economy since the Eden Project opened.

How it’s going

It’s March 2001 when the Eden Project officially opens to the public. And boy, was it a popular place to be. In the first year they welcomed 1.2 million visitors through the doors.

About a year later, around August 2002, the Eden Project decides to get some big names in to spice things up a bit and it launches its ‘Eden Sessions’, which are basically one-day music festivals. These festivals saw the likes of Oasis, Kylie, Björk and even Elton John grace the stage. The Daily Telegraph even described the Eden Sessions as

Magical … half Glastonbury, half Glyndebourne.

2005 was a pretty big year for the Eden Project. April was the first time their titan arum blossomed in the Rainforest Biome. This flower is the world’s largest and smelliest and it was all thanks to the gardeners who created the conditions to make it happen. It was also in 2005, September this time, that the Core, or the sustainable education centre, opened.

In 2009 the Eden Project set up ‘The Big Lunch’ where everywhere around the UK people could take part in the Big Lunch, whether that be in the street, in a park or in a garden and come together as a community. These day’s ‘The Big Lunch’ is an annual tradition.

2013 saw the Treetop Walkway open. This Treetop Walkway is the first phase of the wider Rainforest Canopy Walkway, which allows visitors to see a rainforest, not from the ground like we normally would, but from a perch up amongst the canopy. This unique view, that is just as important for a rainforest, was extended in 2017. Included in this extension is a rope bridge, a cloud bridge and a place where you can experience the wonder of a tropical rain storm, something I imagine you don’t have a lot of in Cornwall. It’s this Rainforest Canopy Walkway that helps visitors to see just how rainforests keep us alive no matter where we live.

A couple years later in 2015, the Eden Project partnered with Cornwall College and Plymouth University to produce unique courses that allowed students to have a hands-on and practical experience in horticulture and plant science, and garden and landscape design.

And then we get to 2020, and just like the rest of the world, the Eden Project too had to lock down. But the British winter of 2020 was not kind to the Eden Project. After a string of heavy rain, three landslips released floodwater right into the old quarry. But the Eden Project wasn’t going to let this natural event go without taking advantage of it. They turned the site of the landslip into a waterfall just to add to the amazement of the site housing the Biomes. They now use this waterfall to tell the story of water and how it is essential to life for the visitors in quite a unique and intriguing way.

In 2021, the Eden Project began construction, this time underground, on a geothermal well. Now this project within a project is pretty damn exciting. It will be a big step towards heating the whole Eden precinct, including the Biomes, offices and greenhouses with pure green energy. And it doesn’t hurt that it’s all contributing to the UK’s goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Eden Project International

There isn’t just one Eden Project sitting in Cornwall. That was the first Eden Project. There are now Eden Projects all over the world, just waiting for some globally conscious visitors to marvel at what they have to offer.

The idea of Eden Project International was launched back in 2017 and is still developing its mission to have an Eden Project on every inhabited continent around the world. Now that certainly does sound ambitious. But if anyone can do it. It’s the Eden Project.

Not only do they have other Eden Projects across the UK, like the one’s you can find in Dundee, Foyle, Morecambe and Portland, they’ve already got Eden Project’s built in Colombia, Australia, Costa Rica, New Zealand, Graniteville in the US, and Qingdao in China.

And these Eden Projects, they aren’t all the same. They’re being created and developed by individual teams who can provide the same experience as the Eden Project in Cornwall by attending to local needs and themes.

The Eden Project believes that these new Eden’s popping up all around the world

… are our global response to the planetary emergency... The plants, people and buildings at the mothership, Eden Cornwall, demonstrate that radical transformation can become a reality through the power of determination, collaboration and imagination.

How does the Eden Project work

So how does the Eden Project even work? We know that the Eden Project is practically just a massive greenhouse, but how do greenhouses actually work?

Anyone can make themselves a basic greenhouse. All you need is a box made of a solid but transparent material, these could be glass or even clear plastic. Anything that allows the sun to get in and then heat up the air inside.

Basically how it works is that the sunlight coming into the greenhouse heats up the floor. The floor then releases some of this heat energy which heats up the air at the bottom of the greenhouse. Because we know that hot air rises, it is lighter than the cooler air at the top of the greenhouse, so the warm air rises to the top, pushing the cooler air down to the bottom which in turn then gets heated up by the warm floor and you get this cycle of air being heated, rising, then cooling, falling and being heated again. It’s fascinatingly simple and something that happens in our own atmosphere all the time.

But I suppose you might be wondering if this greenhouse effect of heating air is happening in the atmosphere, then how come out here isn’t as warm as inside a greenhouse? And that’s a pretty simple one to answer. Greenhouses are a lot smaller than the planet, so the sunlight, that’s heating the ground, has less air to heat, meaning it can heat it to a higher temperature. The Earth’s atmosphere is pretty big, so even massive giant greenhouses like the Eden Project, are really only heating a fraction of the air that the atmosphere contains. And because the heated air doesn’t need to rise right up to the sky before it falls back down to be heated again, it only needs to rise to the ceiling just a couple metres up. This shorter circulation path allows the air to be heated to higher temperatures.

But then we have to ask ourselves, how do you regulate the temperature and keep it the same all day, especially when the sun might spend a good portion of the day behind a cloud, and not be sending in any sunlight to heat it up. And that is where some fancy modern technology comes in. In your standard greenhouse, like the one you may have at home, your way to control the temperature may be leaving the door open, or sprinkling the ground with some water to cool it a little. But at the Eden Project they have fancy climate-control features. They have a way to release air when things get a bit too hot, and a way to heat the air when the sun’s decided to take the day off. And it’s by using these features that they’re able to keep the temperature the same all year round.

So by now we know what the Eden Project is, their mission, how they plan to change the world, and where you can visit one, but what actually are these biome domes I keep going on about.

The Eden Project structure is made up of three biome domes, each one representing a different climate found around the world.

The first biome, and probably the most impressive to find in Cornwall, is the Humid Tropics Biome. When you wander into this biome you will find yourself transported right into the middle of a tropical rainforest. It’s in here that you’ll find hundreds of trees and plants that you would only normally see in South America, Africa, Asia and down here in Australia. Of course, it certainly goes without saying that all of the plants, not just in this biome but all the biomes, would not survive without the perfect conditions being provided for them. And because tropical rainforests are so close the equator, it’s like one long rainy summer for them. So it really is a real treat to be seeing these plants growing in a part of the world they would not normally be seen.

The next biome is the Warm Temperature Biome. This biome houses a temperate rainforest. Just like the tropical rainforest in the first biome, temperate rainforests need a lot of rain every year, which is perfect for seeing a wide range of plant species. But unlike the tropical rainforest, temperate rainforests are much further from the equator and therefore have distinct seasons, so these conditions need to be replicated. It’s in this biome that you’ll see plants and trees that you would normally find in Southern Africa, the Mediterranean and California.

The last biome you’ll visit is the Roofless Biome, and it’s an open area that contains plants that you would normally find in the Cornwall area, but what’s pretty interesting is Cornwall isn’t the only place in the world to experience Cornish-like weather. You will get similar weather in Chile, the Himalayas, Asia and even southern Australia. That sure does make Cornwall seem a little bit more interesting doesn’t it, having the same climate as the Himalayas, without any of the excitement.

These biomes obviously act like greenhouses, but what material do they use in order to have them so big? Surely it can’t be a plastic sheet, could it be glass panels? Actually the biome domes are made of a strong, transparent and lightweight material called ethylene tetrafluoroethylene or ETFE for short.

This material turned out to be perfect for a greenhouse, and it weighs a lot less than glass too. If you had a piece of glass and a piece of ETFE, both the same size, the piece of ETFE would weigh less than 1% of the piece of glass. Now that’s pretty impressive. And even better is that ETFE is a much better insulator than glass, so it holds the heat so much better and is even more resistant to the ravages of sunlight and the dreaded UV. In fact, ETFE is so efficient at capturing the heat from the sun that the Eden Project’s energy consumption is lower than was even predicted. Another win for the planet.

Each ETFE piece is of a hexagonal shape, three layers of the stuff are placed on top of each other and welded together to make a panel which is then inflated to resemble a pillow. By inflating the panel into a pillow, the air inside allows increased insulation while still allowing the sunlight to get through. It’s this unique structure that makes ETFE incredibly light and shockingly strong.

And it’s by increasing or reducing the amount of air in each pillow panel that allows each biome to control the climate. So on a cold day, they would pump more air into each pillow to provide better insulation, and on a warm day they would deflate the pillows to allow more heat to escape the greenhouse, effectively cooling the interior.

What’s even more impressive is the forethought that went into these amazing structures. Each ETFE pillow panel can easily be detached from the steel frame that holds them altogether, which means that if in the future an even more efficient material is created or found that would work better, the panels can very simply and easily be replaced. It’s as simple as that.

But capturing the greenhouse effect of the sun is just one part of maintaining greenhouses of this size, you of course also need to think about how you’re going to water everything.

Now because we’ve got humid and tropical climates going on here, the Eden Project needed good quality water to keep everything alive and properly watered. The wrong kind of water could poison everything or leave mineral deposits on the plants. So they put they’re thinking caps on and set to work. What better water can you get than rain water? I’ll ask you not answer that, because yes, I am well aware of acid rain. But Cornwall apparently doesn’t have acid rain. So the Eden Project set about channelling the rain that ran-off the surface of the biomes, collecting it all to then use it for their plants.

And it’s turned out to be shockingly effective, the collection system they built captures enough water every day to give 20 000 people a bath. That is a lot of water. Which means that the Eden Project could comfortably survive an eight week drought.

All of this has created an amazing experience, and it’s all so efficient and economical to our planet as well.

Visiting the Eden Project

I’ve heard that the Eden Project is a definite must-see, and to be able to experience these different climates, and see the sheer scale of the rainforests and the smells that all come with it would just be amazing. You can travel throughout the world in a day, just by wandering through the Eden Project precinct, what could be better than that?

And it’s not just any fun location to pop into, it’s a great family day out. Like I mentioned at the start, the Eden Project is first and foremost an education charity, and so educating adults and children alike as to our world and the impact we have on it, and the impact it has on us is high up on the list of this amazing location. Make sure to check out their website before you go because they have all sorts of seasonal events, workshops, activity days, music concerts and really anything else you can imagine. The Eden Project has made it as easy for you to say ‘let’s check out the Eden Project this weekend’ as can be.

There’s always something to do and learn about, and to make things even better you only have to bring yourselves. The Eden Project comes equipped with restaurants, cafes, gift shops, and they even have child and baby friendly toilets. Ingenious. You can even bring your dog if you want to wander around the outdoor areas.

There’s also more to the Eden Project than just greenhouses and your average plant. They’ve got a good 30 acres of outdoor gardens, as well as sculptures to keep things interesting. You can even learn a thing or two over at the educational centre that welcomes all ages, before enjoying that rainforest canopy walk mentioned earlier. This place is truly

A living example of regeneration and sustainable living.

If you’re still hungry after visiting the restaurants and cafes and find yourself at the Eden Project at the right time of year you can even witness the beauty that is the World Pasty Championship. The Eden Project has hosted the competition since 2012, and its sole purpose is to find the best tasting Cornish pasty, but they’ve even branched out a bit and there are smaller competitions for other baked goods as well.

And if all of that hasn’t got you excited then perhaps the longest and fastest zip wire in England will be the thing that see’s you skipping off to the Eden Project. It’s 660 metres long and you can reach the thrilling speeds of 96 kilometres an hour, which I don’t have to tell you is shockingly fast when you’re flying through the air attached by just a thin piece of wire. But the Eden Project hasn’t just stopped at the zip wire, they’ve also got a giant swing, a leap of faith and an aerial obstacle course. I mean it really is a proper day out.