It's a no doubt irritating habit of mine to enthuse madly about things the people I'm talking/writing to probably already know about. But what the hell - have you been to the Eden project, just outside St Austell, in Cornwall?
A familiar image, perhaps. The meaning of the Project, what it can, in the best of all ways (immersion) teach us is valuable beyond price.
Of course it's expensive - look at the scale and complexity of the whole thing! It's excellent value for money, though. And the kids loved it.
At the social level, it shows what can be done with a truly creative vision, given guts, energy and good team-work - and of course, brilliant fund-raising and planning. In those aspects alone, it is a truly heartwarming and encouraging place. It's brought a lot of employment and money into an area that badly needed both.
Did you ever visit the old disused claypits in the area pre-Project? Fascinating, but - yuk. This is what Eden looked like before they got going.
It's not just the chance to explore and learn about the plants of medditeranean and tropical regions inside the mighty Biomes. I came away with a much stronger sense of the interrelatedness of organic and non-organic things - life-forms and environments.
eg this:
The Seed. A huge solid (Cornish granite) sculpture which you are invited to contemplate quietly - it's set a little apart in its own space. It represents all seeds, and more - some deep structures.
You'll recognise the patterning from things such as a sunflower seed-head. The sculptor worked up a groundplan plan of 2000 circles according to Fibonacci numbers onto a graceful curved cone. According to Wikipedia, "(Fibonacci sequences) also appear in biological settings,[9] such as branching in trees, phyllotaxis (the arrangement of leaves on a stem), the fruit sprouts of a pineapple,[10] the flowering of an artichoke, an uncurling fern and the arrangement of a pine cone's bracts."
One of the signatures of the underlying unities of life, and of abstract human thought. Fibonacci sequences are, apparently, closely linked to the Golden Mean, that ancient guide to satisying proportionality in works of art.
What the Project tells us - no, what it makes us feel as well as think - is that we are entirely linked to the rest of the living and non-living world, and we are the first creatures to be able to conceptualise that underlying unity abstract thought and in works of art. So, er - let's not blow it.
BTW, outside the Domes there are some amusing and thought-provoking displays. It does this without being too preachy. Here's the Junk Monster - made up with what each of us will throw away in a lifetime, in the way of appliances and IT stuff:
And there's some lovely planting, to satisfy inquisitive gardeners even on a grey, showery day:
We live in a wordworld of exaggerated and trivial superlatives, but even that won't stop me saying that the Eden Project is amazing
(OED "causing great surprise or wonder; astonishing" - so, not just "great fun" or even "cool....")
I'm proud of what they've achieved, and I'm not even Cornish!
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