The Eden Project is built in a former china clay pit purchased from Goonvean Limited in 1998. Goonvean is a privately held china clay mining company owned by Lord and Lady Falmouth and their son the Hon. Evelyn Boscawen who lives at Tregothnan.

A massive project initially funded from the European Regional Development Fund £12,900,000 and £19,300,000 from other sources of Public funding including the Millennium Commission Lottery funding. Total public funding invested is now in excess of  £86,000,000

The Eden Project is a phenomenal success projected visitors for 2001 were 200,000 rising to 750,000 in 2002, so far there have been over 6 million visitors with an average of 1.2 million visitors a year.

The scale and size of Eden mean there is so much to see and do, therefore you need to allow at least a day to explore even part of Eden. It should be noted most of the plants at Eden are not rare except for the ones where Eden has become involved in the conservation of endangered species.