Go to the Eden Project from St Austellnearby

We had already got the tickets in Falmouth since the observation point times are enormous. The rule waiting time is on average 1 hour.
We arrived on the dot at 10 am and could go onto the area without waiting time. Is imposing the two glass buildings respectively pass this one from 4 glass domes.
On the one hand subtropical plants are in the glass domes and dry regions plants.
Ponder and it is purpose of the whole plant to get all plants available on the earth.
We have stayed in these area fo about 5 hours.
The outer plants very beautiful were also produced at partly very steep.

Welcome explorers all ( H.01)

The Humid Tropics Biome at Eden, the largest conservatory in the world, is 240 m long, 55 m high and 110 m wide, and will allow the tropical rainforest trees it contains to reach their full potential.
Home-made topsoil covers the 15,590 qm floor to a depth of over half a metre. In it we are growing over 2.000 species of carefully selected tropical plants, from botanical gardens, nurseries, universities and research stations oll over the world. The air is kept between 18° and 35°C to provide a range of environments that suit the tropical plants. The misters and the waterfall keep the air moist, so you won`t have to put with the rainforest's 1,500 mm(60 inches) of rain a year.
Feel free to explore your steamy supermarket, your global weather machine - the crops and lush green rainforests of the tropical world, from the Oceanic islands to Malysia, and from West Africa to tropical South America. We bring you a taste of life from the point of view of the people who use this amazing resource - not only the people who live there, but also the people who live here.

The Oceanic Islands: conserving the land (H.02)

Isolated from the rest of the world, these dustant islands are home to some highly unusual plants and animals. Some are relics of a lost world, extinct everywhere else: others evolve into strange forms, such as growing to giant size. All are irreplaceable. Island communities are equally isolated, with few resources to support their global responsibility for biodiversity conservation. Climate changes and invasion of aggressive species pose serious threats.
Human settlement has devasted some islands, but many countries now have conservations programmes that offer hope. Protected rare plants in our display at Eden include the beautiful St Helena Ebony, believed ectinct for over a century before two plants were rediscovered clinging to a cliff. We also have the extraordinary Coco-de-Mer from the Seychelles, the largest seed in the world, which takes years to germinate. Eden is working with both countries to suppurt their conservation efforts.
We also have the more common but still remarkable plants, such as the coconut, every part of which is valuable, and mangroves, which are invaluable. Mangrove forests link the land and the sea, protect the coast, provide fuel, tumber and fish. The trees have amazing adaptations that allow them to breathe when the tide is in.

Malaysia: orang dan kebun (people and garden) (H.03)

Within the Malaysian rainforest display at Eden an contemporary Asian house, made by of locally available tomber, rattan and bamboo, sits within a home garden. This garden was based on research carried out througout S.E.Asia but focuses on a study of five smallholdings at Kampong Tampinau, a small village in Sabah, Malasian Borneo.
The plants may be tropical but there are similarities with our own gardens - both have fruit trees, herbs, flowers and vegetable beds. Here winging beans and yard-long beans take the place of runner or broad beans in the rotation, helping to fertilise the soil, pak choi replaces cabbage and taro replaces carrots. Many people here are very experienced gardeners and the wide range of plants in home gardens provides food security all the year round.
In times of drought or hardship there is always something to eat - guavas, mangoes, sweet potatoes and even the horseradish tree, Moringa oleifera , a leguminous tree with edible leaves, beans, flowers and roots that smell of horseradish, often used in soups. The garden also provides building materials, medicines and fruit to barter or sell at the local market. The kebun is a backyard self-sufficient larder where local people have selected, collected and bred the best from their superstore - the surrounding rainforest.

West Africa: managing the land (H.04)

How do you feed the soil, feed yourselves and replant the forest all in the same place at the same time? Some farmers and smallholders in the Humid Tropics are doing just that. Eden visited Ndoumdjom village in Cameroon, so that the story of their succesful agroforesty system could be told.
Crops such as maize, sorghum and coffee are planted between trees. The trees help to stop the soil eroding (especially on slopes), and often produce a crop themselves.
Leguminous trees are often used in these systems because, like our peas and beans, they have nitrogen-fixing bacteria in their roots that can turn the nitrogen from the air into plant food.
Using these agroforesty systems local people can produce food crops, cash crops and crops for other uses as well as improving their land and environment for the future.


Tropical South America: shifting cultivation and plant gathering (H.05)

The Eden team visited Guyana to meet the people and explore the rain forest. They learnt of wild harvests and mobile gardens, they ate pepperpot and were taught the cassava song by the children.
In the forest the villagers practise shifting cultivation, moving their garden on to a new plot every year, rotating round the village on a 14-year cycle. They do this by cutting about an acre of forest which they let dry before burning to provide fertility from the ashes. Staple crops such as cassava and sweet potatoes are then planted. Unlike our starch crops (potato and bread) cassava sometimes contains prussic acid or hydrocyanide, a poison that has to be washed out before cooking. After harvesting the land is left and is soon reclaimed by the forest.
The villagers also use their forest as a natural garden, collecting wild plants for food, fuel, medicine and materials. Myths and stories help to keep the knowledge alive in their cultures and the plants alive in their forests - they care for the land that feeds them.


Crops and cultivation (H.06)

Madame Wealth
What has the rainforest got to do with us? You may be surprised - rubber gloves, chocolate, oils in processed foods, lipstick gloss, varnishes, food colouring.... where do they all come from? Every day these forests touch our lives, and we touch them. Many of the things that we do and buy affect the future of the rainforest. What we do can make a difference.


Rubber (H 09)

Elastic, pliable, waterproof, shock absorbing, and mouldable - from work to play and transport to health, rubber has played its part.
The milky latex from the rubber tree, Hevea brasliensis, has been tapped for centuries in tropical South America to make rubber boots, bottles and balls.
In the 18th century European scientists stepped in - soon waterproof clothing and catheters hit the west. Then came the car and with our new passion for travel a spiralling demand for rubber to keep those pneumatic tyres turning. Thousands of American Indians died in the greedy race to tap from the wild. A frantic global search for plants producing alternatives was followed by the rise of a new industry in Asia .... cultivated rubber.
Economics came into play... more demand, more supply uversupply and complex schemes to restrict output causing rivalry between players.
Was restrictes supplies and introduced a new factor; synthetic rubber.
Rises in the price of petrol, AIDS and a renewed need to find a natural solution to the problem: condoms and rubber gloves. Natural rubber bounces back. Where next?


Tropical timber

Cutting down trees is not always bad - wood is one of the most environmentally friendly and renewable resources we have. However, sustainable use relies on a credible assesemant of how much wood can be cut without harming the forest. Many 'sustainable timber' labelling shemes exist, not all of which are plausible or veritable.
The Forest Stewardship Council is backed by a growing number of leading environmental and social groups from around the world. Forest products are followed through the chain of supply to the original forests, and regular reviews are made. To date over 20 million hectars of forest in nearly 40 countries are certified, but there is more to do to make a perfect system.
At Eden we explain the symbols you find on the wood you buy, and bring news from the sustainable timber projects in the tropical rainforest.


Cocoa und chocolate

Bitter brew or soft centres
Cocoa beans, brewed up with chillies, were used as a drink by Mayan and Aztec nobles, and worshipped as "the drink of the gods" - thats what the Latin name, Theobroma cacao, means. Today chocolate lovers eat as well as drink cocoa, wrapped, boxed and powered, after processing and blending with sugar and often milk.

The origin of chocolate
Cocoa trees started life in South America's rainforest, but today most of our cocoa comes from smallholdings in West Africa. In 1999 the global chocolate industry decided to promote an international initiative to create a worldwide programme of research and development on sustainable cocoa production.

Back to the roots
Rather than clear new areas of natural vegetation the aim is to replant existing cocoa-growing areas with improved varieties that are more productive and resistant to disease. British chocolate manufactures, through their trade assosiation BCCCA, are involved in a programme to collect and conserve wild cocoa varieties and provide plant breeders with the information and source material they need to develop bttter cocoa varieties. Research is also looking at production systems in forest gardens and smallholdings that benefit the environment and the producer. It is hopped that these initiatives will provide the 15 million farmers througout the tropics with a more reliable source and better qualitiy of cocoa and still give us our chocolate - looking after the tropical rainforests and the plants they contain can help to proviode.


Palms (H 12)

In the tropic stems, leaves, trunks, sap and fruits of thousands of different types of palm provide walls and thatch, ropes and boats, palm hearts and dates, coconuts and sago, sugar and wine, cooking oil and much more. These local plams make a huge contribution to the livelihoods of local people.
Coconuts als "wash up" on European shores, used mainly of their flesh(copra) and fibre (coir). We may be more familiar with Bounty Bars, pina coladas, hair conditioners, potting composts and doormats.
On the international market one palm reigns supreme, however. The oil palm produces palm oil, which is found in products we use day in, day out - processed foods, cleaning products and cosmetics. Supply chases demand and plantations march into the rainforest. Plantation work is hard and dirty, but people work dirty and hard to get the world on satellite TV. "Don't cut down the forest", we say. Who are we to talk? We already have our TV dream. Where next? New initiatives are slowly emerging, like projects to explore planting oil plams on degraded land rather than newly felled virgin rainforest, and to set up co-operatives so the workers can control their own destinies. We will keep you in touch.


Rice (H13)

Age-old respect

We look at the moon and see a man in it. In Vietnam they look at the moon and in its shadows see the Rice Goddess, stacking her freshly harvested rice in the shade of a Bo tree.
Gold, diamonds and pearls are our treasures. But in Chinese tradition, five grains are precious jewels; the first of these is rice.
Why? Because this grain has fed more people over a longer period than any other crop, and today nourishes around half the people in the world.

Future harvest

Between now and 2020, around 1,2 billion extra rice consumers will be born in Asia alone. Scientist trying to adress the problem are looking to some of the hundred thousends rice landraces already out there for assistance. On of the real success stories is IR36, which was the first rice dred to have resistance to grassy stunt virus. The resistance came from a wild relation in India - Oryza nivara. This transformed rice production, and at one time IR36 was the most widely grown rice cultivar in the world.
At Eden we are planning to make a rice goddess from rice straw so that she may look down on to the diversity of rice landraces and oversee their role in the future of this vital food.


Coffee (H 14)

Coffee at work, coffee at play, coffee all night and coffee all day. Our stimulating taily tipple is not only big business; it has been a driving force in history.
Starting life in Ethiopia, coffee travelled to the Yemen, took a pilgrimage to Mecca, wound up the whirling dervishes and gave birth to the coffee house in the Middle East. Exchanching news and views, wheeling and dealing, chin-wagging, and even plotting - these cafes provided the place, and the coffee the stimulation, to let the imagination run free. By the 1600s coffee and its houses reached Britain and continued to spawn intellect and commerce. Lloyds of London, the Toler and the Royal Society all startet life in coffee houses.

Luxury or necessity?

Coffee fulled the industrial age and started a fashion that never went away. Today it is one of the leading products on world trade, on some years second only to petroleum. At the beginning of the chain, things are often less rosy. Every single bean is picked by hand, labour is high and income low. The Fairtrade organisation is working with coffee growers to ensure they get a better deal, and is telling their story at Eden.


Banana (H 17)

Have you ever seen a straight banana?

We bring you the short, long, pink, yellow, curved and, possibly. straight. You can also design your own in the Banana Machine courtey of Paul Spooner and Will Jackson of Mongrel Media (alias"Dead Cat" automata makers).

Whoops, have a banana

In the tropics all sorts of bananas are used as sweet and savoury foods, beer, cloth, roofing material and much more. It's the 20% which land on our shores that have caused problems.

Banana drama

When they were first introduced to Europe we didn't know to do with them, some ate them with the skins on, others didn't even like them with the skins off. Now they are on the bestseller list. However, this yellow energy booster for babies and sportsmen alike is at the centre of transatlantic trade war.

Banana split

Some bananas come from Caribbean smallholdings, others from large, big-business plantations in Latin America. Who decides with reach our shores? Reade rules, economics, working conditions, and the environment all come into it. The Americans and Europeans are battling it out with the World Trade Organisation as we write. However, now that organic and fair bananas are on the increase in the marketplace some of that choice in your hands.


Bamboo

This green gold of the east is:

A versatile friend

Half the world's people use bamboo - for their homes and furniture, food and fuel, to make music and medicine, paper and poles, toys and tools, skyscraping scaffolding and gorge-spanning suspension bridges.

Beautiful and virtuous

Ancient Chinese philosophers praised its constancy and integrity. Their writers called it the "gentleman" and their artists used it for canvas, brush and subject.

Strong

Bamboo's hollow tubes make it strong but light. Within its issues short, tough fibres sit in a resilient matrix, providing nature's vesion of fibregalss.
Bamboo is a fantastic, renewable resource that provides materials and employment. Bamboo unites science and art, rich and poor, high tech and low tech, city and country - a real bridge-builder.


Spice (H 22)

Today we buy spices for a couple of quid and use a pinch here and there - pepper on our potatoes, nutmeg in our pudding and saffraon on our cakes. However in the past spices were worth their weight in gold and shaped the world as we know it.

Spice and death: nutmeg was thought to cure the bubonic plaque. Yet in the mid-1300s it was along the spice route from Central Asia that the Black Death first travelled to Europe. It killed a third of the population in 5 years.

Sevrets and lies: the Arabs monopolised the landbased spice trade to the West until the 15th century. Western Europeans were spun yarns to keep their traders away - of Arabs fishing for spices by moonlight, of cinnamon harvested from the bestst of ferocius birds, of boiling seas and people turning black in the tropical sun. In the early days they also thaought the world was flat.

India or America? Columbus, thinking global, sailed west not east to find the East OIndien Spice Islands. He sailed off the edge of the map and, when he reached the West Indies in 1492, changed not only the map but also the world.

From camels to gunboats: in the 16th and 17th centuries the Dutch, Portuguese and English literally blasted each other ou of the water in their eastern race top the Spice Islands, the Moluccas of the East Indies. This brutal trade made the fortunes of many places, ports and people and partially funded the industrialisation of Europe.

Disappearing island: in 1667 at the Treaty of Breda, after years of battles deciding who "owned" what, the English relinquished their claims on Run, a tiny island in the East Indies, and the Dutch theirs on New York (formerly New Amsterdam), a small town on the island of Manhattan. A nutmeg island, no longer on the map, was swapped for the big apple.

In the Humid Tropic Biome at Eden we don't just have spices growing; a theatrical spice boat tells tales of adventures on the High Seas.


On the way.... ( H 07)

Cola

Probably the best.-known Latin name in the world. Cola nitido, an African tree with caffeine-rich seeds, is part of the age-old culture of West Africa. Cola, a sparkling flavoured drink, is part of a new global culture.

Chewing gum (H 08)

Real chewing gum grows on ( or rather in ) trees. A milky latex, chicle, is harvested from the tropical sapodilla tree,Monikaro zapota, and made into gum. This doesn't harm the tree (if it is not overtapped) or the forest, provides a living for local people and makes gum that can clean your teeth.

Pineapples (H 15)

Image seeing and tasting your first pineapple - melons, strawberries, rasberries and apples all rolled into one perhaps? Alcohol, silky materials, candles, animal feed and medicines are also made from this plant.

Sugar (H 16)

During the Renessance people used, on average, around a teaspoonful of sugar a year. Today the planet grows more sugar came than it does wheat. Once it is processed, we eat it on and in many foods, and can turn it into plastic, fuel, water-soluble syringe needles and even sculptures. Sugar also brought global slavery and dietary disease. Sugar - love it, hate it, some can't to without it.

Tropical fruit ( H18)

Familiar faces from the supermarket meet new arrivals. Mangoes, papayas, lychees, breadfruit, custard apples, Natal cherries....

Tropical vegetables (H 20)

Yam, sweet potato, pumkins and plantains, pigeon peas, peppers - try old favourites and new flavours.


Tropical dyes (H 21)

Plants to dye for. Under the skin of our cultural divesity we have much in common. Plants provide the coloured backdrop to our lives. The Mehinaku Indians of Brazil use annatto as a hair dye, we use it (as E16ob) to colour cheese and sweets.

Floral beauty (H 23)

Beautiful plants such as passion flowers, the incredible jade vine and the weird Dutchman's pipe delight and astonish with their amazing variety.

The Mediterranean Basin:
culture's cradle (W 02)

The Greeks spread as far afield as the olive will grow, the Romans as far as the vine. Some say that the Mediterranean is the shape of the shade of the olive tree.
Landcapes in the Mediterranean look natural but are shaped by mankind.
Mediterranean vegetation has been burnt by people fur hunting, and cut for shelter and firewood for hundreds of thousands of years.
Wood was a common building material, and when charcoal was used to smelt iron, the Ancient Greeks and Romans caused severe deforestation and suffered from the resulting soil erosion. Have we learnt the lesson yet?

Take history - and olives

Should we protect the man-made groves? The ancient terraced olive grove supports far more species of animals than a pine forest (insects, reptiles, birds, bats).
Young people leave the mountain farms for the coastal tourist towns and poats knock down the stone terracce walls. The precious topsoil, the wealth of the land - laboriously dragged uphill - is lost.

Maquis and Garrique

Maquis is the classic Mediterranean shrubland canopy of evergreen aromatic plants adapted to poor soils and dry summers, in over-exploited conditions maquis is replaced by garrique, a tough, low, shrubby landscape. Both are poor grazing land and are often considered useless. But they are rich in life, with many unique plants and important insects and reptiles. They can be overlooked, however, having no spectacular birds or mammals. Do we save only the beautiful things?



South Africa (W 03)

From the Afro-Montane lush forests of the wetter mountains and gorges to the red sands of the Namaqualand semi-desert, summer drought and fire have made the South African plant palette one of the wonders of the world.
The Cape Floral Kingdom is in a class of its own, with the greated variety of plants on Earth. The size of Portugal, it has araound 8,600 species of plants, more than double the density of the typical tropical rainforest. An amazing 5,800 of them are found only in this one place.
First and foremost the Fynbos, with its:
- Tall (1 -3-m) Protea family shrubs with large leathery leaves ( Proteaceae)
- Heath-like shrubs ( Ericaceae)
- Wiry, reed-like plants (Restionaceae)
- And the greatest variety if bulbs on earth

We also bring you:
- The parched plains of the Karoo, which bakes to 50° C in the summer and freezes in winter, and where droughts rule.
- Namaqualand with its multi-coloured carpet of flowers from the daisy family.


California (W 04)

Mediterranean California includes the area south of San Franzisco Bay - the prairie grasslands and marshes of the Central Valley and the chaparral in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and Coastal Range, and south to Baja California.

Flower garden

California is the birthplace of the Ceanothus and Californian poppies that we now see in our own back gardens. Out in the dense, tough, wiry, spiky chaparral we find less familiar faces - scrub oak, buck bush, toyon, white sage, sugar berry, tasselbush and many more.

Food garden

The American Indian tribes - who reached California from the Bering Straits about 15,000 years ago - found the Central Valley a land of plenty. California was so rich in resources that a third of all the Indians in North America lived there.


Crops and cultivation (W 05)

The sunny Mediterranean regions have sprouted major industries to grow our supermarket salads, fruits and other crops year-round. Huge areas of tomatoes in California and peppers under plastic in Greece and Spain, for example, need food, water and protection against pests and diseases.
Pressure is mounting to reduce subsidies on water and to move to low-input, energy-efficient, self-sustaining and diversified farming. Just the kind of crops that a Greek or Spanish grandparent would have used - the ones that made the ancient Mediterranean healthy, wealthy and wise. Back to the future?


Cork (W 07)

When the Quercus suber tree in 25 - 30 years old it will do its first strip - for cork. Around 15 billion wine corks are pulled a year, and trees produce around 4000 corks per strip. Tree destroyer? Definitely not. Cork oaks, unlike most trees, regenerate their bark. This can be (skilfully) stripped off at around nine - to twelve - year intervals for up to 200 years.
Cork oak wood pastures, known as montados (Portugal) or dehesas (Spain), can also "grow" charcoal and meat, as pigs feed beneath the trees. One speciality is "jamon Serrano", high-value ham, from the Iberian pig - good for rural employment. Theses managed "montados" and "dehesas" provide valuable habitats for many plants, birds and animals - good for the environment.
So: pull a real cork and help to save 42 species of birds, including the rare Black Vulture and the Short-toed Eagle.


Citrus (W 09)

Citrus crop up everywhere - in poetry, paintings, prose and recipe books. Oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruit, tangerines and even fruits shaped like rubber gloves - it's a promiscuous family, fond of breeding. It is also a very old family, the origin of many of them lost in time. The clementine is a cross between mandarins and bitter Seville oranges, and the tangelo the offspring of tangerines and grapefruits.
Citrus bring rewards, but are thisty plants - to grow them vast irrigation projects are sometimes needed. As well as providing tasty fruit and drink, citrus fruit are used in perfumes, cleaning products, animal feed, anti-bacterial agents and even as CFC substitutes.


Grape vines (W 11)

The grape vine has sometimes been linked to immortality . Why? Because its short-lived fruits are given long life as wine, or because the dead-looking vines burst into life each spring? Maybe it stems from the effect wine has on us. Certainly mortals were taken to new heights when they drank wine as an offering to the gods in classical times. We have also kept the vine and the wine alive through myth and stories for centuries.
Tim Shaw, Cornish-based sculptor, brings us Dionysos, the Greek god of wine, depicted as giant bull. The wild, gyrating Maenads, who worshipped Dionysos, mirror the twisting shapes of the vines. Dionysos represents life, vegetation and festivities but is also god of destruction. Ambiguous, like wine, he creates good feeling with a sting in the tail - releasing wild passions and some headaches too.


Olives (W 16)

What's in a Greek urn? Some define the Mediterranean as the place where the olive trees grow. These trees can survive drought, poor soils and even sally water. Without the olive oil trade the Greeks might never have spread their civilisation.

Liquid gold

Several hundred years ago olive oil provided light for lamps, and the golden essence to anoint the brave, wise and rich and embalm the dead.
Today it is more commonly used to cook and flavour our food. It is thought to reduce our cholesterol levels and deter heart disease. It makes a good hair tonic, and has even been tried out as a contraceptive. (Don't try this at home!)

Healthy oil, healthy soil

As the oil becomes more popular production is booming, with Spain taking the lead. Today the squeeze is on to reduce chemical inputs to keep the land in good heart as well as the people.



Plants for perfume (W 17)

The scent of violets, a whiff of mint - how do they make you feel? What plants to you wear to delight your nose and why do you wear them?
Scent goes straight to the seat of emotion and memory in the ancestral core of your brain. Plants use scent to attract pollinators and repel predators. Perfumiers make scents from plant extracts just as musicians use notes to compose melodies. Why do we use perfume? To signal, secure or warn, like plants, or for sweet memory and comfort?
Cleopatra, queen of perfume, power and seduction, wore kyphi (containing rose, crocus and violet) on her hands and aegyptium (almond oil, honey, cinnamon, orange and henna) on her feet. She also scented the purple sails of her barge.

Temperature: 18°C - cloudy, rain and sunny

Driven miles: 67 = 108 km
Our cottage in Falmouth - The two castles cottage