Eden isn’t a Place - it’s an Attitude
Location: CORNWALL, ENGLAND
The iconic domes of the Eden Project in Cornwall have inspired millions. Now, new Eden sites are in development around the world.
In six years, this UK Millennium Landmark Project transformed a disused mine into a horticultural and educational paradise. The learning cultivated there over almost 20 years is now being used to repeat this achievement at new sites on every continent.
PARTNERS
Eden Project International is working with a wide variety of partners in the business, government and charity sectors on the development of sister sites to its pioneering first project:
Alcoa of Australia
UNESCO
University of N’Djamena
China Jinmao Holdings Limited
Matambú Forest Nature Reserve
Costa Rican Ministry of Environment and Energy
Christchurch City Council
Grimshaw Architects
Foyle River Gardens Charity
Lancashire Enterprise Partnership
Lancaster University
Lancashire County Council
Lancaster City Council
Dundee City Council
University of Dundee
Horse Creek Trust
AIMS
The Eden Project was created to tell stories for a new millennium. Stories about our capacity to heal the soil as well as damage it. Stories that excite us to reimagine our future. Stories that inspire us to ask what it means to be citizens of a living world.
An educational charity, the Project’s principle aim since its foundation has been to educate a wide audience about the science of biology and conservation and about the potential for regeneration, all from its base in Cornwall, UK. Almost 20 years on, subsidiary Eden Project International is working with partners across the world with the aim of establishing sites on damaged land on every inhabitable continent by the end of this decade.
CONTEXT
In 1995, mining activity ceased at the china clay pit 2km from the town of St Blazey in Cornwall. Six years later, the site opened again, transformed into a sweeping green landscape punctuated by several huge bubble-like greenhouses. This iconic facility is the original Eden Project, one of the UK’s Landmark Millennium Projects, which has since attracted over 20 million visitors and contributed more than £2bn to the Cornish economy. Its temperate gardens and Mediterranean and tropical geo-dome biomes are home to the largest collection of plants useful to humans ever assembled, alongside a number of educational facilities and art installations.
Perhaps the most impressive feat in the transformation of this site from disused mine to thriving garden was the creation of 90,000 tons of new soil. Working with Reading University, the Project combined mineral components from local mine waste with biological components from composted bark (for the domes) and domestic green waste (for the outdoor gardens) to generate the living soil that all other life on the site depends upon.
METHOD
While the original site continues to share its stories with new generations of visitors, the Eden Project has begun to broaden its scope and spread these stories further afield. Alongside the informal educational experience it offers its visitors, the Project runs a number of accredited courses, offering the opportunity for students to develop technical and practical skills based on the many insights the Project provides. Current offerings include degrees in education, horticulture and sustainable management, creative leadership courses, and a variety of apprenticeships.
Eden Project International is currently laying the groundwork to develop a network of sister sites across the world. Eden attractions, similar in design and purpose to the Cornwall site, are being planned in Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the USA and at two locations in China. In each case, the sites will be created through the regeneration of disused and damaged land and will showcase key elements of the local biosphere. Alongside these attractions, the Project is working with national and international authorities at two wild sites in Costa Rica and Chad, where the knowledge cultivated at Eden attractions is helping to protect and rejuvenate crucial natural landscapes.
Every Eden Project will be a unique product of its surroundings, maintaining autonomy within the network while sharing values with the other Project sites. By the end of the decade, the Eden Project envisions a thriving, global network of embedded, local projects, working together and always learning from one another.