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The Eden Project in Cornwall is the best thing to have happened in a dreadful year of Domes and disease. In a remarkably short space of time, a giant china clay quarry has been transformed into a spectacular space age garden. With exactly half the funding coming from the Millennium Commission, it has cost less than 10% of the Dome and is at least a hundred times more interesting. It also has a serious message for all those concerned about the future of our countryside.

With companies like Ove Arup, Nicholas Grimshaw and McAlpine (both groups, Sir Robert and Alfred, working together in a joint venture for the first time), it is hardly surprising that the result should be brilliant; what is extraordinary is the genius of the visionary behind it all, Tim Smit, in persuading them all to back him, often for free and without a contract. The result, opened on March 17th 2001, less than six wet months after the first plants arrived, is described without exaggeration as ‘The Eighth Wonder of the World’ and I know of no one who has not been dazzled and inspired by it. A living theatre of plants and people, it consists at present of three ‘biomes’ representing different climates. The first and most overwhelming is the tropical biome, the biggest conservatory in the world. Large enough to house the Tower of London, it contains rain forest trees and plants from Amazonia, West Africa, Malaysia and Oceania around a huge indoor waterfall. Nothing strikes a jarring note: the walkways have real big bamboo railings and the Malay house is just like dozens I have slept in.

From the hot and humid tropics you stroll past two excellent restaurants to the sweetly scented Warm Temperate biome and are immediately transported to the Mediterranean. It has olive groves, vineyards and dry stone walls where you can sit and close your eyes, while the smells of thyme, rosemary and other aromatic plants waft over you. Californian and South African environments have also been created here, with a welter of colour and diversity.

Finally, at this stage, (a further Desert biome is planned) there is the ‘Roofless’ biome, the outside grounds where another of the great Cornish gardens is taking shape. Cornwall is favoured with an especially kind climate for growing plants from the Himalayas, Chile and Australasia out of doors, as well as our own native flora, and these are on display up the striking terraces surrounding the pit. This is above all a place that is designed to inspire and encourage us to understand. It emphatically is not a theme park, and yet there is information and entertainment discretely available everywhere. There are notices about the immense variety of plants and fascinating descriptions of their uses and attributes, but they are not obtrusive and, unlike at so many exhibitions, you are not led from one placard to another so that you never look at the objects.

If you are worried about the future of this land of ours and all the wonderful diversity we have nurtured over the centuries, and who could not be now that we see it threatened by annihilation, then you should visit Eden for inspiration and hope. You will not, I promise, fail to come away stimulated and heartened, as well as a lot more knowledgeable about the role plants have played in our lives throughout the millennia. What is farming about if it is not gardening on a larger scale? The management of the countryside, in which we landowners and farmers take such pride and for which we so often receive so much calumny, is just doing the same things on a still larger scale. We are all going to have to dream in the years ahead if we are to restore, renew and rebuild our living landscape. Eden is a place of practical dreams.

As global warming increasingly adds to our problems by changing our climate, there are useful lessons to learn and ideas to try through the production of crops not yet seen here, or not seen for a long time. A visit may well give you ideas for the future. Whether we like it or not, if we are to continue as stewards of the countryside we are all going to have to welcome more people into it. One compensation for this, and there are others, is the cash flow they can generate from buying our harvest. Farm and garden gate produce sales are the only way to reverse the dominance of the supermarkets. We need to diversify and specialize to attract them to our outlet, rather than the one down the road. Did you know that saffron, the most expensive spice in the world, was once produced in quantity in Britain? Henry VIII changed saffron Walden’s name from Chypping Walden in 1514 because of the huge wealth it earned. Liquorice was cultivated by the monks at Pontefract in Yorkshire in the 16th Century and used in Pontefract cakes. There are many more such examples at Eden.

Whatever else it does, a visit to Eden cannot fail to uplift your spirit - and we all need that at the moment - but it may also help secure your future.

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