As someone who has been to the Eden Project three times – including twice in one week – you could say I’m a big fan. And I’m not the only one: two million people visited the world’s largest greenhouse during its first year, 240,000 of those in August alone.

It’s not just your first sight of the massive space-age biomes, nor the experience of walking from savannah through to rainforest that makes an impression. It’s also appreciating the whole concept of the project – which is not just to preserve plant species in perpetuity, but also to broaden our perspective and encourage us to make that all-important link between the plant kingdom and our own well-being. Its mission statement is: “To promote the understanding and responsible management of the vital relationship between plants, people and resources, leading towards a sustainable future for all.”

TRADA recognised the project’s potential for the timber industry early on, becoming a partner in June 2001, just a few months after Eden opened.

Throughout May, TRADA ran a series of talks at Eden to support the project’s own ‘Plants in Construction’ month and to present, in lay terms, timber to the public.

As TRADA’s chief executive Dr Chris Gill said: “We all appreciate the need to educate the public, specifiers and users of timber about the value of the forest resource and the environmental qualities wood can offer, but the real challenge is to build understanding in successive generations.”

This opportunity to take timber to the public at such an eye-popping venue represents a real coup for the industry.

The education process was also under way at trade exhibitions both at home and abroad and here it seems timber is well on the way to winning the battle against alternative materials. Carrefour attracted 400 exhibitors and 9,000 visitors and is now hailed as “the 100% timber trade show”, while Interbuild displayed more timber products than our correspondent Keith Fryer can ever remember.

The industry still has its detractors – see our feature on NHG Timber’s efforts to counter Greenpeace‘s claims for example – and the more innovative it can be in promoting its good name, the better.

If you’re in Cornwall, go and see the Eden Project – and if you’re not in Cornwall, go and see it anyway.