ABSTRACT
Mined for metal and industrial minerals like clay, the Cornish landscape has been altered by humanity for centuries, and not until the turn of the twenty-first century has there been a concerted effort to rehabilitate the damage. Clay pits do not usually have to contend with heavy metal pollution concerns, nor do they have the impending threat of acidic drainage that is a foremost challenge to remediation efforts for metal and coal mines. The Bodiva clay pit would have made for an interesting garden excursion, but generating large-scale tourist revenues from an earlier mine reclamation needed more than just a garden. Botany and engineering have a natural convergence in greenhouses, and so the Eden project designers set out to construct the world's largest greenhouse in the Bodiva pit. Using the greenhouse to cultivate exotic plants can also have an important role in restoration research itself.
