Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive

for rights reasons we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in the year 2000 and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a conservationist. He didn't start out that way. He made his money in the music business and then on holiday in Cornwall he fell in love with the place and moved his family there.

First of all he restored a farmhouse which he still lives in.

Then he stumbled across some lost gardens and knowing next to nothing about plants restored them too.

Now he's embarked on his most ambitious plan so far, the Eden Project.

His beloved county will soon be home to the world's largest greenhouses, part of an organic

theme park of flora, sculptures, performance and

restaurants which combined to create a showcase and a laboratory for the

earth's plant life. If I believe something's going to work he says, my belief seems to rub off.

He is Tim Smith.

So a botanic impresario is what you've become Tim.

Does that surprise you?

Having studied what archaeology at

university and then gone through a rock and roll career? You know it's a funny

place to end up. It's a total shock yes but it's been's been great. I think there's a very famous Hungarian

inventor called Nagi, who always said that you should actually try to do your best in a field

in which you know absolutely nothing, because that way you don't come out with a lot of baggage.

It's a great title at The Eden Project.

Cunges up this kind of perfect place where everything is beautiful and bountiful and so on.

But it is very difficult to sum up and I just use the word theme part there you don't like

that bit do you?

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