Des gens ordinaires avec une vision extraordinaire
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Transformed from a clay pit to a breathtaking botanical garden hosting thousands of plant species, this is the story of The Eden Project – built by ordinary people daring to be unreasonable.
The Eden Project. When they hear that name, most people in the UK and many from abroad immediately have a vision in their minds of airy glass domes in the middle of a deep rift in the Cornish countryside.
But when construction began, back in 1998, there widespread scepticism about whether the concept would work. Could life really be brought back to such a scarred industrial site? Would the giant conservatories be able to withstand the conditions? And would anyone want to visit them?
More than a quarter of a century on, the naysayers have been proved wrong and Sir Tim Smit, the visionary who co-founded the Eden Project, triumphantly right. The bubble-like geodesic domes – one for the rainforest biome, one for the Mediterranean – are filled with every shade of burgeoning green life, and millions have flocked to see them (not only in Cornwall but, now, in locations globally), coming away awed at the miracle of our planet and inspired by the message of hope and regeneration.
Because the story of the Eden Project is a story not just about the environment, or plants, or conservation, but about “giving people permission to dream”, as Tim puts it. About proving that, when a group of determined people band together, impossible things become possible.
What Eden means to me is an unquenchable optimism, knowing we did this, and imagining how much more we could do if we could harness the energy. It’s a sense of possibility.
Tim Smit, Co-founder, The Eden Project, UK
The audacious idea
It seemed a reasonable next challenge in Tim’s life journey: he’d spent the previous decade (since moving to Cornwall in 1987) restoring the Lost Gardens of Heligan, a 1000 acre private estate first developed into pleasure gardens in the 19th century; the gardens were neglected following World War I, eventually becoming completely overrun before Tim and Jim Willis joined forces to lead their restoration and reopening to the public. Before that, Tim’s experience was decidedly unrelated to the environment: he was an award-winning music producer and composer.
The Eden Project was conceived in the late 1990s by Tim and a small group of fellow dreamers, all possessed by an audacious idea: to mark the new millennium by bringing a dead post-industrial landscape back to life, and to use this resurrection to spur visitors to take better care of our fragile and miraculous planet.
Tim insists that any child running around a playground has similarly bold ideas; it’s just that most of us have our imagination squashed out of us by a society that prizes safety above risk, the known rather than the unknown, the mundane rather than the extraordinary.
“Every eight-year-old in every school in every country of the whole world dreams of building Eden projects and big dams and mad Ludwig castles up mountains,” he says. “But that gets knocked out of us. It's as if we have lost our self-confidence in marvellousness, and therefore want to make very existence seem like a drudge.”
To him, the opposite is true. “What Eden means to me is an unquenchable optimism, knowing we did this, and imagining how much more we could do if we could harness the energy. It's a sense of possibility.”
Ultimately, Eden wasn’t built by superheroes or big powerful corporations, but by ordinary people “daring to be unreasonable”. The very first sketches were scribbled on napkins over dinner in a pub, by Tony Hunt and Andrew Whalley of architecture firm Grimshaw, which had built the curved glass structure of Waterloo International rail terminal. The stained napkins have been kept and framed for posterity – a tangible reminder of the project’s humble origins.
The Earth is this most extraordinary marble in the universe and it’s mad that we all aren’t focused on caring for it
Jo Elworthy, Chief Science Engagement Officer, The Eden Project, UK
Action turns hope into reality
Of course, Tim couldn’t do everything by himself; he needed a strong and dedicated team around him to make Eden a reality. Luckily, he had a knack for convincing others to seize the day and join him on the journey. Andy Jasper, the Eden Project’s CEO, recalls how inspired he was by Tim’s willingness to chase a dream that might seem crazy to others.
“Most people today, if they looked at a clay pit the way that Tim looked at it, would say, ‘That’s a really nice idea, love it. But no way. No way. That will cost us a billion pounds’,” says Andy. “But something happened when Tim looked over the edge of the pit with this idea, that, actually, this is going to be my life’s work.” Today Andy has a quote on his wall from Nelson Mandela, which is, ‘May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears’, to remind him of the importance of listening to his gut rather than to the voices that say things can never change.
Dr Jo Elworthy, Director of Interpretation, Science and Engagement, took a similar leap of faith. She left a successful career as a TV producer, making science programmes, to throw in her lot with the fledgling Eden Project. She first met Tim when she went to interview him about growing pineapples at the Lost Gardens of Heligan (a derelict garden, also in Cornwall, which he rediscovered and restored in the late 1980s). When he and Jo finished their interview, Tim announced he had something to show her.
“He drove me to this extraordinary crater and said, ‘I’m going to build the biggest greenhouse in the world here and we’re going to tell the story of our dependence on plants’. He asked me what I did, and I said, ‘I tell stories of plants and people’. Then he said, ‘Will you give it all up and come and help me set this place up?’ I was, like, ‘I only met you five minutes ago.’ Then he said to me, ‘What would you rather have written on your tombstone? I wish I had, or I’m glad I did?’ Suddenly, this pit transformed in my mind into this theatre where thousands of people would come. So I quit my job and moved to Cornwall.”
Since then, more than 25 million visitors have flocked to the ‘mothership’ Eden Project Cornwall, and ‘New Edens’ and Eden initiatives, interventions and collaborations are in various phases of development across the UK (in Morecambe, Lancashire and Dundee, Scotland) and internationally (Costa Rica and China). Across them all, Jo has used her talent for storytelling to show them just how intertwined plants are with human existence and culture, and to remind people of all that the Earth gives us: clean water, fresh air, rich biodiversity and a stable climate. “The Earth is this most extraordinary marble in the universe and it’s mad that we all aren’t focused on caring for it,” she says.
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