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Eden Project

'SPLASHING OUT'

James Bond may have met his match in the Eden Project, one of the locations for the next 007 film. The spy who loves gadgets should raise an eyebrow at the irrigation. Advanced computer-based controls sprinkle, seep and spray water on to the many zones of the soon-to-be filmset.

By clicking on a screen, staff pinpoint areas and plants to supply precise amounts of water. Underground valves and overhead sprays simulate rainstorms. Land levels vary by up to 40m and correct water pressures are vital to avoid run-off and waste.

This system cost hundreds of thousands of pounds but is tantamount to an “insurance policy”, says senior design engineer Roger Davey, at installation firm Ocmis. For a Millennium Project costing nearly £90 million and including 100,000 plants, Eden has much to lose without such underwriting.

“This complexity of spaces made this a huge balancing act. There are three world areas – tropics, warm temperature and outside spaces – and it could have been all too easy to throw water left, right and centre,” says Davey. “At the early stages they thought they could do it manually with a hose not a control system.”

In fairness, the Eden Project was unique and forecasting its irrigation needs was always going to be tricky, adds Davey.

Underestimating irrigation is common and is part of the British way of thinking rather than an isolated professional trait, he feels. Davey recently worked on a landscape scheme with trees imported from Germany at £50,000 each. The client refused to spend £500 on irrigation.

“It’s the country we live in. If we have an inch of snow everything grinds to a halt. If it’s hot we go into drought mode, and when the rain comes we fret about floods. The Spanish or the French think of irrigation from the work go,” he says.

“We don’t, and it is a curious British mentality, given our over-reaction to the elements. We accept poor conditions and muddle through. Landscape architects are better than many allied professionals, but their priority is to sell the impression. The client often doesn’t realise you need food and water to maintain that impression.”

Ocmis, which also worked on projects such as Legoland and Gleneagles golf course, faced a tough and costly challenge at Blue Water retail park near Dartford. A network of pipes runs under the car park to feed trees in concrete planters and break up a potentially hostile flat, hard surface with patches of green.
Costs for irrigation schemes depend mainly on site conditions as much as technology and go from £10,000 to £500,000, he says. Irrigation for a nine-hole golf course or supermarket landscape can cost around £40,000.

Victor Jamieson, Rain Bird Europe’s area manager for the UK, agrees irrigation is insurance, and supplied components to Ocmis for the Eden Project. “People tend to spend more on labour than irrigation to shift costs from the project to maintenance.
“I’m amazed at some of the landscape projects where there’s not provision for irrigation, not even a tap. Other schemes sacrifice watering systems first when the budget is cut. This is crazy as plants are so expensive, especially semi-mature trees.”

Rain Bird Europe is over 60 years old and operates in 130 countries. Large irrigation schemes include London’s Jubilee Park and Disneyland Paris, which relied on sprinklers and drippers.

Ocmis is one of the largest irrigation firms in northern Europe and behind watering for some very prestigious projects, including vast landscapes for English Partnerships.

But the 17-year old firm had rarely seen anything like the problems thrown up by the Eden Project. The firm had to thread a network of pipes under sloping land and through tropical environments with unusual plants.

This involved laying drip-line pipework that resembled the veins of a leaf onto the ground and between mature and semi-mature planting. Mulch went over the pipes, which were fixed to solenoid valve fixtures.

This system allows you to “cycle and soak”, says Ocmis senior design engineer Roger Davey. If a plant needs five millimetres of water and you irrigate once a day, you risk run-off by watering faster than the plant can absorb moisture.

“However, we can run the valve five times every four minutes to make sure all the moisture is absorbed and there is no run-off.”

Outside the biomes, subsoil and topsoil went on top of the pipes. Valve boxes inside and out were linked to computers to allow pin-sharp and central control of the entire irrigation system, tailored to each area.

For more information regarding the Eden Project or similar projects, please contact our Head Office on 0870 600 5131.

Article adapted from Landscape Review magazine, June/July 2002 Issue. Story written by Jez Abbott.

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