Creating Eden in a Despoiled Land

Situated in a worked out china clay quarry in Cornwall, England, the Eden Project – an educational garden and unique post-mining rehabilitation scheme – has transformed the environmental, social and economic landscape of the county. The project is successfully growing all the world’s major crops in artificial soils, in artificial climates in a worked-out quarry. Before planting could begin however, several major engineering and technological challenges had to be met. China clay workings are notoriously unstable and must be continuously pumped to prevent flooding in a predominantly wet climate. There was also no topsoil available to act as a plant growth substrate. Consequently, two years of work was required to stabilise slopes; install a state of the art drainage and pumping system; develop the basic landscape; construct the world’s largest conservatories and create 80,000 tonnes of artificial soils from recycled materials – all before planting could begin. Eden opened in March 2001. Its Mission is one of education about sustainable development, using displays of common plants that people use everyday around the world as the primary drivers for this message. In its first two years of opening, Eden has attracted two million visitors each year (having previously expected a maximum of 750,000 per year) and generated around £150 million for an otherwise economically depressed region in its first year of operation alone. This paper reviews the nature of the challenges and how they were overcome