Eden Project - The Build
Few people have reached the 21st Century without having heard of "The Eden Project" - the biggest visitor attraction in Cornwall to date.
Conceived in 1994, by Tim Smit, the man behind The Lost Gardens of Heligan, the project build finally got under way in October 1998 in Boldelva pit, a worked out China clay quarry near St Austell. Although on paper it was an ideal site being some 60 metres deep and south facing, it was in reality an inverted cone with a propensity to gather water! The first job was to level the bottom by infilling by up to 20 metres, using some 1.8 million tonnes of spoil from surrounding tips. The next trick was to stabilise the sides, and design and incorporate a drainage system to cope with a water flow of nearly 5 gallons a second!
This produced a well-drained china clay pit, and those of you who are familiar with the "White Mountains" of the central part of Cornwall will know that that is not an ideal growing medium. The amount of topsoil needed was simply not available so "The Eden Project" set about making its own. In the event they used mainly waste products from the forestry and china clay industries mixed with sand to create some 85,000 tonnes of soil. In doing so they were also able to adjust the mix to provide different soil types for different environments.
By May 2000 the building site was open to visitors and by January 2001 had attracted ½ million visitors (to a building site!!) The construction of the Eden Biomes merited an entry in The Guinness Book of Records as the largest free standing scaffold ever built. 46,000 scaffolding poles were used in the construction, which if laid end to end would stretch 230 miles.
With the two Eden Biomes and visitor centre completed "The Eden Project" opened fully to the public in March 2001.
The Core; Eden's education centre, is a more recent development. The building was completed when "Seed", the giant granite sculpture at the heart of the building, was lowered into place by crane in June 2007.
Eden is constantly evolving and growing. New builds are sure to follow in time!
The information on this site is not in any way endorsed by The Eden Project.