interviews

The whole reason for having Eden is to show people what man’s relationship with plants is all about and try and explain that very delicate balance between agronomy and conservation, whilst doing it in a fun and entertaining way. We want to ensure that everybody who is coming here today somehow gets the message, but not to preach at them or lecture them; to try and do it in a fun way to ensure that people when they leave have an understanding of why Eden is here.

So why is Eden here? Why is it in Cornwall and why is it in this clay pit?

It is in Cornwall because the original idea was Tim Smit’s. He lives in Cornwall of course – he lives locally in St Austell – and it was decided that it would be a good place to put it because it would help the tourist industry and it would help the local economy; and the choice of actual site is because they thought that putting it in a South facing disused china clay pit would be a good geographical location for it. As we have the different climatic regions, we obviously want to maximise the sunshine so the biomes are built leaning against that North wall, all South facing so that they get most of the sun.

Were there any major unforeseen difficulties?

Lots. Where would you like me to start! Finance – raising the money was a terrible struggle and still is. We have only just recently got sufficient funds to say we can fund our capital project at £86,000,000, so funding it has been a complete nightmare. Planning was very difficult because local planners were sceptical about whether or not it was going to cause massive congestion on the roads and other things, and what it was going to look like because obviously it was a very unusual design and even whether or not they wanted to have it in Cornwall, so planning was a huge problem. There have been all sorts of problems with construction and design because it is a completely revolutionary design. Something like this has never been built before. Other problems were things like just growing the plants because no-one has every actually tried to grow a tropical rainforest before. We grew it in our local nursery and then transported across to here the plants we had grown and replanted them here at Bodelva. Soil manufacture was something else. We have made our own soils. So we have had lots of problems along the way but we have solved them as we have gone along.

Can you see any problems coming up in the future?

Oh yes, I can see lots. Overcrowding – you have been here today and we have got a lot of people on this site and we have only been open three weeks. We don’t know how many visitors to expect but we are obviously getting rather more than we thought and they are going to get fed up waiting in queues, is that going to be a major problem? This is Easter – what is it going to be like in May? We don’t know. But that is just the operational side of it. What we have got to do now is build up the institute side which is the research side, which is the serious side of Eden. What you have seen here is just the visitor attraction. That is not really what Eden is about. Eden is about much more important things like the research behind it.

How long will the plastic last on the biomes?

You mean the ETFE foil? Well, there are a number of other buildings that have used ETFE foil as part of their construction and I think one them has been up and around for about 25 years. The manufacturers seem to think that 25 years is about right but nobody really knows. The nice thing about ETFE foil panels is not so much how long they will last, but that you can replace each individual panel if something goes wrong with it. So if we get a puncture in one of them – if a bird flies into it or it gets damaged in some other way, you can actually take that panel out as if you were just changing a window frame and putting a new one in. So we could replace all the panels over a period of time. One would hope that they would not all go at once but we need to keep an eye on them. Obviously we are monitoring it very closely as we don’t really know but we hope about 25 years and that is not an unreasonable amount of time in which to have to replace the whole thing.

How many panes are there?

No idea, I haven’t counted them but you are welcome to go out and count them yourself.

How long did it take from conception to the opening?

If you mean from Tim having his first idea, I think that was about 1994 when he first dreamt the idea up and then we got the Millennium Commission grant in 1996, so seven years from first thought and five years from getting the Millennium Commission grant to actually opening the doors.

How does the amount of interest and number of visitors compare to what was anticipated?

It is exceeding all expectations. We thought last year that we could probably get about 250 visitors. This was our Big Build exhibition when we only had the visitor centre open and we got just short of half a million. This year we were anticipating getting about 750,000 but if we keep on like this it will be nearer 2,000,000. I am sure it won’t keep on like this; it’s just that it is Easter, it is new and everybody is rushing to see it. I am sure we will however exceed our predictions.

How long is it anticipated that this project will continue?

Forever, Eden is about looking at sustainable development and assuming that it is successful, Eden is intended to be an ongoing project to develop sustainable ideas and we hope that it will be here forever. That is the plan.
Would you like me to explain the display behind us because that is trying to explain in a very funny way what Eden is about. What we are trying to demonstrate is what it would be like if there weren’t any plants. So the first thing that happens is that the breakfast cereal goes off the table, because cereal is a plant crop. Then the table disappears because it is made of wood. Then everything in the fridge disappears because everything in there is made in some way or another from plants. Then you get people losing their clothes because their clothes are made from cotton, which is a plant. Finally they collapse on the floor which means they have been asphyxiated because there is no air, because if we didn’t have plants there would be no air to breath and we would all suffocate. So we are trying to demonstrate that if there were no plants, that is what would happen. We would all die. There would be nothing to eat; there would be no house to live in, no carpet, no books, no paper, no wood, no clothes, and no air. That’s what it is all about. We think it is quite clever actually as well as being fun.

Is our brilliant winter, spring, etc climate going to upset anything?

No, because the biomes are covered with three different climatic regions. There are the humid tropics with areas like Malaysia, West Africa, Oceania and it is all humidity controlled, and this is the advantage of the ETFE foil. The second area is the Then there is the outside temperate climate, which is basically Cornwall. We don’t tend to have frost here, so we can grow plants like those in a cool Chilean rainforest.

Very, very positive, very favourable. Everyone is impressed. There are a few complaints but they are by far the minority. People are wowed by the size of it, by the general idea of it. The general response has been superb. We have had a lot of people come through, more than we had anticipated and we are very pleasantly surprised. Our largest number was yesterday (I don’t know what today’s figures are) but yesterday we had 10,800 people come through which is very impressive. When we opened four weeks ago we had about 3.500 on the first day and we were very pleasantly surprised with that. Whether these numbers will continue we are not sure, but we feel we are always going to get some thousands per day but as for these high figures in the 8,000+ region, we will have to wait and see what happens during the summer season.

The future of Eden is massive, it is positive, it is going to continue apace with a lot of new things coming on board. The name of Eden as the Eden Project is very deliberate, as the main project will always be there because we are constantly evolving, we are constantly expanding our remit. We are a project. We will never be fully finished. There will always be planting to be done. There will always be potentially new exhibits to show. We are not a botanic garden so we are not fussed in the years to come of taking out one exhibit and showing another area of the world with the plants that we use. Certainly the visual remit of Eden is what I was saying, the expansion of the plants and showing them to public. What is going on behind the scenes, which is Eden’s role of facilitating the sharing of knowledge by organisations and governments, corporate bodies, individuals, universities, anyone who wants to come on board with Eden and share their knowledge and showing that they are working towards a common goal, they are interested in green issues, they are interested in sustainability, be that from a conservation standpoint or from an economic standpoint, if they are interested we will facilitate their knowledge when we can, as we can to assist. And that is probably the greatest asset that Eden has and that will never stop.

I don’t know but somebody has told me that it is not as many as I thought. It is in the hundreds rather than in the thousands per biome. What I can tell you that the largest span, the largest hexagon, is in this biome and it is 11 metres. If you do want to know I can find out, or check the website. I am sure they will have all the facts and figures listed.

My role is two fold. I am a guide. That is my formal title and that is what I have been hired for. When I am not guiding I am explaining. The difference is that when I am guiding I am taking a designated group around who have paid a sum of money to be taken around for 90 minutes. Explaining is when I am on site and there are key spaces in each of the biomes where we can talk to the general public, attract them in and explain individual plants or a display of plants. Where we are standing in the humid tropics right now there are individual plants I cold tell you about such as the Peanut directly at our feet. The Tamarind tree is on the corner there. The Tamarind membrane around the seed is used in Worcester Sauce to provide the flavour. This is also a good laxative. If you want to sit on the toilet all day, down a bottle of Worcester Sauce and go into the toilet with a good book to read. You will get through it, no worries. Conversely, directly in front of us on the lower path there is West Africa and the display we are showing there is agroforestry, the use of plants growing at different paces at different times for human use.
One of the places where we can grab people is on the corner there because we can talk to people without blocking the way. Those are my two main roles. I am also trained in First Aid and that is a qualification I had prior to arrival having worked extensively with St John’s Ambulance and as such I am here to administer first aid when and if need be. With the amount of people we get through, if I am not administering first aid each day then a colleague certainly is.

They were so pleased with the project that they stopped me to ask what I thought of it. They were very impressed, especially with the humid biome containing the rainforest plants.

The father was fascinated by the variety of plants, and the way the planting was made to look so natural.

The mother thought it was very interesting to learn about all the different plants and to see what sugar cane, for example, looks like.

The son, aged about nine, thought the best exhibits were the Cola tree, the Chewing Gum tree and the Chocolate tree, because he didn’t realise these things came from trees.

They had been all around the biomes but were reluctant to leave, as they were still taking it all in.

They were on holiday in Cornwall and visited Eden because they happened to see a sign.

They had enjoyed every minute of their visit but having done it they were in the shop buying fridge magnets and just wanted to leave and go on to the next thing. They did say they would visit again if they were in the area.

Group of two adults with five girls, aged about four years to about 12 years.

The smallest girl was having difficulty with all the walking, especially up the steps to the top of the humid biome, but seemed to be enjoying the experience. Two girls aged about seven years were fascinated by the views down in to areas they had come from. The older girls were just walking quietly, looking around them. The man was full of enthusiasm, encouraging the others to hurry along to the next interesting exhibit and the woman was bringing up the rear with discarded coats from the children.

This group were in the smaller biome and seemed to have completely forgotten about the plants because there was a jazz band playing and the children were busy dancing to the music, which was a special feature for the Bank Holiday weekend.

The road in to the Eden Project was very busy and we were in a queue for about 30 minutes before reaching a member of staff who told us that getting on to the site and parking would probably take us about another hour. We told him we had an appointment with Carey Lescure and were sent to another entrance, which was very quiet. We were then directed to the staff car park. Several people in the queue turned around and did not bother to wait but the vast majority seemed happy to sit patiently in their cars for the 1-2 hours needed to get in to the Project.

There are acres of car parks, all marked with fruit symbols and numbers, to assist people in finding their cars when they leave. There are free small transport vehicles to take able-bodied and disabled people from their cars to the Project and back again when they leave.
Once you reach the entrance, you are directed to the pay desk and from then on, all access entertainment and transport is free.

On site, most areas are accessible by wheelchair on wide gently sloping or flat paths. Only the highest area of the humid biome would have been out of reach to wheelchairs. In the humid biome there was an air-conditioned shelter for visitors experiencing difficulties with the climate.

Seats throughout the project were made from natural wood in innovative shapes, and art exhibits made by Cornish artists were spread throughout the site. When I visited before the biomes were open there were different exhibits from those on this visit. There were driftwood horses, driftwood and cork pigs and a welded giant ant.

Food provision seemed very good with a restaurant near the entrance and a further one between the two biomes, but on a lower level so that you did not have to pass through it unless you wanted to. There were no obvious restrictions on bringing your own food and drink if you wanted.

Although there were thousands of people on site during our visit, there was no sense of crowding and no need to rush. You could stay as long or as short a time as you wanted.

The biomes can be viewed from a platform near the entrance and you can chose to walk down gentle slopes, down steeper slopes if you want to take the short route, or travel down in a land train pulled by a tractor.

Once in the biomes, you can enter or leave at will, and having paid for the day, you can go back to your car and re-enter freely, the security personnel unobtrusively checking your entry sticker as you pass.

We were among the last people to leave. An announcement said that the biomes were closing in ten minutes and asked people make their way back to the land train which would take them up the hill to the entrance. There was no sense of urgency. When the land train was full it went up the hill and further land trains were sent down as necessary to ensure that everyone who wanted a ride could have one.