Eden Project

With my initial idea of using symbiont's in nature and cross referencing them to human life and its impacts on the environment, I decided to start my research at the Eden Project.


My main area of interest was the tropical biome, where the team have created a largely self sufficient, (minus some watering) self contained Eco-system. This rich bio-diverse atmosphere contains thousands of species of plants, crawling with insect life, each playing its part. Ants are feeding from the nectar of large flowers, subsequently transferring pollen to the next plant providing a mutually beneficial relationship. Birds and reptiles keep the invertebrate numbers in check as a form of natural control.

The varying scale of the vegetation is not short of being extraordinary. The fast rate at which it grows has generated a feeling of gigantisism, making the viewer appear child like in proportion. Scale is an issue I addressed largely on my BA course in the form of my dissertation and practical work and is a theme i plan on using throughout the course of my MA.

Bottle Palm above; Highly endangered tree with a 5 to 6 month germination period, and slow growing.

Along with symbiotic relationships, I have also been reading about the depletion of the British honey bee, due to disease and the introduction of foreign species. If our native insects were to disappear it would have a huge impact on the vegetation the country would be able to sustain. Einstein once said that if bees were to disappear from the earth then humans would only have 4 years to live. I think this is extreme, but enforces the idea of the importance of symbiotic relationships as with the vanilla plant (below) would surely become rapidly extinct. I have also read in regions of china the depletion of their native bees has become so severe that farmers have taken to employing workers to pollinate crops by hand with paint brushes.

Above: The pollination process as depicted by the Eden Project