Firstly, Happy Birthday to my husband. Hope you have had a great weekend of travel. Love you tons!
This weekend as the weather was not supposed to be the greatest we decided to take the opportunity to hit the Eden Project. Located 2.5 to 3 hours away from Bristol down in Cornwall we got up early Saturday morning to hit the road. A little bit of rain on the way but in all an overcast but fine day.
The Eden Project opened its doors to the public in 2001 and is made up of a number of indoor and outdoor working, educational and research related gardens. The areas of highest intrigue are the Tropical and Mediterranean displays located inside the Biomes. I suppose you could summarise a biome down into a very large space age looking greenhouse constructed of steel frames and double thickness hextagonal shaped plastic panels that provide the insulation and consistent temperatures neeeded on the inside. They look fantastic and have an incredible feel about them on the inside. It’s like being inside a huge bee hive but filled with plants.
The gardens have been constructed inside an old china clay pit thereby putting this disaster of an area to better use. The purpose of the gardens appear to be for research and education. It is interesting to note that a large number of British children don’t know where their food comes from let along the impact humans have on their surroundings and vice versa. Not only does it focus on food production but also the large number of other uses we have for plants, their extracts, what they provide for us oxygen wise etc. For example the number of medicines, building products, oil resources etc that come from plants is quite interesting.
The gardens are well constructed, labelled and provide a great time for kids (and big kids alike) for running around through all the displays, sculptures and adventure areas. They even have a zipline which Steve had to of course have a go on. Big kid!
My favourite display was the tropical biome. It was a great heat inside, high humidity (of course) and great displays complete with banana trees, coffee trees, paw paw, rice, rubber trees and even a waterfall. Fantastic!
To our Aussie mates – see if you recognise a certain plant in one of these photos. Discovered in the Blue Mountains of Sydney, its the Wollemi Pine! They are selling them over here in order to get as many out there as possible. You to can have a piece of Jurassic history for 80 quid!!!