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Source: Yimei Media

Abandoned clay field transformed into Garden of Eden

Amazing Change

You may have seen many photos like this: devastated mountains, fierce and desolate. This picture shows a clay field that is about to be abandoned in Cornwall, in the southwest corner of the island of England. It started out as a mining industry, but it declined again due to the competition in the global market in the late Industrial Revolution.

No one would have thought that this almost dilapidated site would become the world's largest indoor tropical botanical garden and be called: The Garden of Eden.

In 1990, a catastrophic storm hit Cornwall, destroying many of the cultural heritage gardens there, and putting the flowers and plants that Britain had collected from around the world and cultivated over a long period of time at risk of extinction.

At this time, a man named Tim Smit came up with the idea of building a giant greenhouse...

Tim was originally an archaeologist, but somehow he fell in love with music. Seven of his records have sold more than 300,000 copies. Later, he changed his career to environmental protection, and achieved some success. He was worried that there was no place for him to achieve greater success, and this abandoned clay field gave him the opportunity to show his talents.

In 1996, the first design sketch of the Garden of Eden was drawn on this napkin.

The building is designed in a honeycomb shape, which saves materials and is strong and not easy to deform.

With the help of the University of Reading, they transformed the 83,000 tonnes of soil in the dome so that all the minerals in it came from fertilizer from local mines, and the nutrients in it were made from composted bark. The outside of the dome was also paved with soil composted from domestic green waste.

After four years and a cost of more than £140 billion, the project was finally completed in 2000.

Botanical Garden

Plant Parade

Eden contains three biomes, designed to showcase three distinct climate regions around the world.

Tropical Rainforest Biome

Mediterranean Biome

Outdoor Garden

Do you know?

The Garden of Eden brings together almost all the plants on Earth!

Of course, Yimeijun, who is lazy and doesn't know the difference between grains, said that he only knows the banana and the stinky flower in front. Some of these exotic flowers and plants can't even be found in Chinese names, please take them away!

Get close to nature

Close To the Nature

Just like every school has a motto, the famous saying of the Garden of Eden is: Plants are indispensable friends of mankind.

Many tools, clothing, and food in human life come from plants, but we often don't realize it. So this task was given to the Garden of Eden! Look how well-intentioned they were:

Place a special kettle next to the field where the herbs are grown, and you can smell the fragrance of the herbs through the tube connected to the kettle;

Set up a popcorn vending machine in front of the cornfield;

In front of the coffee trees, sacks filled with coffee beans were piled up;

Next to the flax field, some linen clothes were placed...

In addition to these small details, Eden also provides accommodation, where families with children can have close contact with nature with peace of mind.

Some companies also bring their team building activities here.

If you think these are not exciting enough, you can experience their large swings and high-flying trapeze, and fly in the embrace of nature!

Eat well and eat low carbon

Food，Delicious and Low-carbon

In order to support the local economy, more than 90% of the food in Eden is locally supplied, and crops with little impact on the environment are selected as much as possible.

The food is different every day, and the appearance is so good... Yimeijun can't help himself anymore.

The leftover food will be put into the fertilizer machine and returned to the soil.

Green wedding in progress

Green Style Wedding

Eden also accepts weddings for newlyweds, with tropical environments and Mediterranean styles for you to choose from!

Looking at the smiles on the faces of the newlyweds, who would remember that this place was once a barren and abandoned mine?

Data shows that the current 1,500 mining areas of various types have occupied and damaged 2 million hectares of land, equivalent to the area of more than 2.8 million football fields. An additional 33,000 to 47,000 hectares of land are added each year, equivalent to 50,000 football fields.

However, in terms of land reclamation, the land reclamation rate is only 15%, far lower than the international level of 50%-70%.

This is of course related to the fact that we are still developers, but this is not the reason why we don’t work hard. Eden Garden provides a very good development model, improving the environment of abandoned mines, cultivating tourists’ awareness of caring for the environment, and bringing jobs to local people, achieving three goals at one stroke.