Tim Smit sets out to save rare fruit and vegetables
THE co-founder of the worldrenowned Eden Project and the man behind the Lost Gardens of Heligan has unveiled ambitious plans for his next Cornwall attraction.
Sir Tim Smit is planning a third venture in Cornwall, Gillyflower Farm, on a former golf course. It will be a hybrid attraction that will have strong links with his previous projects at Eden and Heligan.
Sir Tim has described the project as “the daughter of Heligan” and revealed plans have been under consideration for the past four years. A formal planning application will be submitted early next year and Sir Tim said he would welcome feedback.
The 66-year-old said that the site – named after one of Cornwall’s native apple species – could become “one of the most beautiful outdoor leisure facilities in Europe”.
He said: “We really feel as if we could create a real national centre of first class horticulture and first class crop management and food production.”
He also believes the additions to the site, which include a ‘Hub’ building similar to that of the Eden Project’s Core building, will provide an important facility and create around 30-jobs including apprenticeship and training opportunities in the horticulture industry.
In a video address to unveil the proposal, he said: “I wanted to talk to my neighbours, my friends and my colleagues in Lostwithiel to explain the venture that we are hoping to embark on at the former Lostwithiel Golf and Country Club down Cott Lane.
“Many of you may know that at the end of 2016, beginning of 2017, we purchased the golf course not the golf club, with the ambition to build on at least two thirds of it, the greatest rare orchard in Europe.
“I have been working with The Lost Gardens of Heligan for the last 30 years in protecting rare heritage varieties of fruit and vegetable that have disappeared from the popular fruit canon because I believe that they are important as a gene supply for the future.
“The project in Lostwithiel has a different ambition,” he explains. “Which is to put together fruit trees that no one in their right mind would plant for commercial reasons because they take too long to arrive at a fruiting state.
“But we were very interested in the notion of legacy and what happens if we actually dared to wait and therefore create something very special here on the banks of the valley of the River Fowey. So that is what we have done.
“We set out in 2017 having chosen Phillip McMillan Brown who was the horticultural director, first of The Lost Gardens of Heligan and then latterly of the Eden Project, who is in his 80s, and decided to have one more adventure.”
Mr McMillan Brown has handselected all the trees from his long experience and in the autumn of 2019 some 2,972 fruit trees including apples, pears and gages, along with walnut trees, were planted.
An acre-square potager garden has also been created in the northern part of the orchard that will be a reservoir of rare European vegetables that Sir Tim Smit says many of which will be completely unfamiliar to the British palette.
“Our ambition is to grow them and then allow the public to taste them,” he explained.