Gas works chosen for new Eden attraction

THE Eden Project has unveiled its latest expansion plans for a new Eden in Scotland.

- OLIVIER VERGNAULT

The team in Cornwall said Eden Project Scotland will transform the “disused and unloved” former gas works in Dundee city centre on the River Tay into a “catalyst for environmental regeneration”.

The site was once a hub of 19th century industrial activity, producing 2.6 billion cubic feet of coal gas by 1954 and employing more than 400 workers. It was notoriously known for its smell of sulfur and coke (coal).

The pride of the Scottish industrial city, it closed in 1963 and was largely demolished in the mid-1960s after the discovery of North Sea natural gas.

It is this brownfield site, including the giant gas holder which remains, that the team behind Eden Project Cornwall, near St Austell, wants to transform and regenerate into Dundee's own Eden Project.

The Eden Project received planning permission in 2024 for the £130 million project to convert the former gas works into a “Lush Bunker” and a series of walled gardens inspired by the Nine Incorporated Trades of Dundee.

At the time Dundee City Council leader, Councillor John Alexander, said: “The project will help deliver hundreds of jobs, huge visitor numbers and tens of millions of pounds for the local economy. But it will also provide new educational opportunities and seek to build work on efforts within our communities, well beyond the site boundary.