Annual Review 2022-23

Education is at the heart of what we do at Eden. We offer learning opportunities from preschool to degree level and beyond to connect people of all ages with the natural world and help them to understand their place within it. We also provide leadership programmes for businesses and community training for people who want to roll up their sleeves and make a difference.

1) Eden's first school opened

In September 2022, 15 Reception and 7 Nursery children became the first ever pupils of Sky Primary and Eden Project Nursery, which will grow to over 230 early years and primary children when the school relocates to its permanent home in West Carclaze Garden Village. Nature, sustainability and learning outdoors are at the heart of the new school’s ethos.

2) Free science lesson plans

Our Schools Team launched a new series of free science lesson plans for teachers designed to go beyond the classroom and inspire children to connect with nature in their school grounds. The lessons, designed for the upper end of Key Stage 2, respond to DfE’s plans, announced at COP26, to introduce measures that enhance climate change education for children. 

3) Early Career Teacher Weekends

There is a national crisis in the teaching profession: 25% of Early Career Teachers (ECTs) quit within the first three years. In response, our Schools Team launched the ECT Eden Project Weekender, a 3-day residential course designed to help ECTs rediscover through reflection, collaboration and adventure why they became teachers in the first place.

4) Florence Nightingale Foundation collaboration

HotHouse, the Eden Project’s creative leadership programme, partnered with The Florence Nightingale Foundation to work with NHS Senior Nurses and Midwives. 

They have developed three new programmes covering sustainability, health and well-being, including a three-night retreat for Florence Nightingale Foundation Scholarship holders.

Eden’s nature recovery programmes deliver benefits to people and nature. Our therapeutic horticulture programmes provide pathways for people to find comfort and pleasure in nature, often working in conjunction with the National Wildflower Centre’s biodiversity initiatives. 

1) National Wildflower Centre

The National Wildflower Centre brought people closer to nature by providing new wildflower habitats in urban areas across the UK, including Morecambe, Manchester, Liverpool, Lancaster University, and Dundee.

2) Therapeutic horticulture 

Eden’s therapeutic horticulture programme supported nature recovery by propagating and planting devil’s bit scabious populations on site with veterans from the Defence Gardens Scheme in collaboration with the National Wildflower Centre. These native wildflowers are the main food plant for the marsh fritillary butterfly, a vulnerable species with high conservation status.

3) Nature-based corporate partnerships

We started two new corporate partnerships with Foresight and Canary Wharf, working with these significant landowners and managers to investigate and instigate new ways to encourage nature recovery and nature connection through their estates and investment portfolios.

4) Better health and wellbeing

We continued to develop our outreach programme, creating a strong year-round programme of activities for local families, individuals and groups of all ages that make the most of the whole Eden site, including our first baby yoga sessions to support and connect new parents.

The range and scale of the challenges the world faces today are intimidating, but it is our belief that strong communities have an important part to play in overcoming them. We work nationally and internationally to bring people together through campaigns like The Big Lunch. 

1) The Big Jubilee Lunch 2022

The Big Lunch was the official partner of Her Majesty The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. 

2) Over 200,000 community events

Over 200,000 community events, big and small, are estimated to have taken place bringing together around 17 million people.

3) The longest Big Lunch

Morecambe Promenade hosted the longest Big Jubilee Lunch in the UK, stretching at least 2.5km with over 5,000 people taking part.

4) Free entry to the Eden Project

To mark the historic occasion, entry to the Eden Project was free over the Platinum Jubilee weekend, so that visitors could celebrate together, enjoying an array of special activities and entertainment, as well as a Big Jubilee Lunch.

1) Restoring nature

Five hundred trees were planted on Eden's Outer Estate to repair gaps in ancient Cornish hedges dating back to 1600s. 

2) Sustainable transport

Twenty new charging points were added to our car parks in August 2022. There were 1,832 EV charging sessions this year, avoiding the equivalent of 3.5 tCO₂e* in transport emissions. 

3) Zero waste to landfill in 2022/23

Eden sent zero waste to landfill, and our recycling rate increased from 53% last year to 73% in 2022/23. 

4) Carbon reduction on target

Total carbon emissions across scopes 1, 2 and 3 were reduced by 20% compared to the baseline set in 2019/20, keeping us on track with the required target reduction. Read the report.

*tCO₂e means tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent gases. It’s a way of standardising the measurement of different greenhouse gas emissions. Excess CO₂ in the atmosphere is driving climate change, but there are other GHGs (like methane) that have the same effect.

The Eden Project offers emerging and established artists transformative opportunities to provoke action and inspire hope.

1) Pollinator Pathmaker

Spring 2022 saw the installation of Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg's Pollinator Pathmaker, a new garden designed, planted and optimised for pollinators’ tastes, using a specially created algorithm and curated palette of plants. Pollinator Pathmaker was commissioned by the Eden Project and funded by the Garfield Weston Foundation as part of Create a Buzz. Additional funding supporters include the Gaia Art Foundation and collaborators Google Arts & Culture. You can plan your own at pollinator.art 

2) Super Natural

Our Super Natural exhibition looked at humankind’s ever-evolving understanding of ourselves as a part of the natural world and the systems that inform our varying perspectives. Whether through senses and signals or cycles of carbon, oxygen and water, invisible threads connect a complex, dynamic web of life – and we are all a part of this web. 

3) First Came the Landscape

Commissioned as part of the Super Natural exhibition at Eden, Ingela Ihrman’s First Came the Landscape is a giant stick skeleton made from parts of a single beech tree brought down by Storm Eunice in 2022. The skeleton reposes in a quiet corner of the Eden estate, where it will slowly break down and return to the soil.