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Take One Exhausted Clay Pit: Add Vision
January Six Word Story Challenge: “Bloom”
Biomes bloom into The Eden Project
As the 1990s crept on, the UK began to consider projects to mark the Millennium. Among the many successfully bids for funding, London gained its Dome; Scotland its Falkirk Wheel, and Wales gained its National Arts Centre.
Meanwhile, far into the southwest corner of the country, two men set about persuading others they weren’t insane. They wanted funding to buy a gigantic hole in the ground and turn it into the Garden of Eden.
For 250 years Cornwall had been open-cast mining china clay (kaolin). By the mid-19th century 65,000 tonnes were being extracted annually — and with every tonne, five tonnes of waste, turning the surrounding agricultural land into a grey hellscape — reminiscent of today’s lithium mining.
The spent china-clay pit chosen was 60 metres (170 feet) deep and covered upwards of 35 acres. It was bare rock and the bottom 15 metres were below the water table. The vision was to build two biomes to create a rainforest and a Mediterranean environment, using soil recycled from waste, and only rainwater.
Yet perseverance pays, as does vision. The biomes are covered in hexagonal ETFE self-cleaning pillow-lights, able…
