The best way I can describe this is a plant zoo, as it falls in to a category of its own. It’s not a garden, though it does in some ways actually resemble a Victorian Municipal garden, but nor is it a botanical or physic garden. What it is, is a plant centred visitor attraction with the goal of informing people about the plants of the world and their importance to humanity. To do this Tim Smit and his team throw a great deal of technology, and other peoples’ money, at a worked out clay pit transforming it into a design show piece.  In this he has been very successful and his aim of using technology to both benefit and raise awareness of the environment are to be praised. Problem is somehow I don’t think he is a gardener at heart.

The mass ranks of formal plant displays and elaborate greenhouses showing plants from foreign climates growing in near natural conditions chime with the Victorian parks at their most formal. Married with the ethos of a heart felt wish to inform and educate the public leaves you with the strong sense of deja vu. All of this is very noble and shows there is a great managerial talent behind the Eden Project but the love is of the environment not horticulture. For all the money and praise the project has received any benefit to the art of gardening has been only collateral.

Though the Eden Project has been a great success, not least as a visitor attraction, the success has been more of reclamation and public entertainment than pushing back the boundaries of horticultural excellence.  In this respect it more like the garden festivals of the 1980s and early 1990s. These did provide a vehicle for some much needed urban regeneration and I hope the Eden Project can provide a vehicle for an increased awareness of the importance plants pay I the lives of humans.