• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
John Elkington

John Elkington

A world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development.

  • About
    • Ambassador from the future
  • Past lives
    • Professional
      • Volans
      • SustainAbility
      • CounterCurrent
      • Boards & Advisory Boards
      • Awards & Listings
    • Personal
      • Family
      • Other Influences
      • Education
      • Photography
      • Music
      • Cycling
    • Website
  • Speaking
    • Media
    • Exhibitions
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Reports
    • Articles & Blogs
    • Contributions
    • Tweets
    • Unpublished Writing
  • Journal
  • Contact
  • Show Search
Hide Search

What’s The Plural Of Tardis?

John Elkington · 29 April 2023 · 1 Comment

The Volans team clambered aboard two of (Sir) Tim Smit’s time machines this week: The Lost Gardens of Heligan beamed us back into a sustainable version of the past, while The Eden Project transported us into a version of a sustainable future.

Along the way, I found myself pondering what the plural of Tardis might be – linking out to the time machine in the long-running Dr Who TV series. Tardises? Tardes? Tardis? Whatever it may be, these extraordinary places helped put us all in a more elastic timeframe, and reminded us how some people can turn the apparently impossible into the possible and then the inevitable.

And, like Tardis, which is unimaginably bigger on the inside than seems physically possible when the converted police callbox is viewed from the outside, both Eden and Heligan serve as portals to much wider worlds of possibility than you would suspect when viewing their mapped areas.

Day 1: Mark and Hannah en route to Cornwall

Ever since Louise, our CEO, took over the reins at Volans, we have put more effort into team-building, in all its forms. Or perhaps I should say she has. This week, the team (including Elaine) spent three days in Cornwall, being taken behind the looking glass at two wonderlands created by our friend (Sir) Tim Smit: Eden and Heligan.

In addition to Tim, we were taken behind the scenes by the likes of Rob Chatwin (Eden’s CEO), Alexandra Dixon (Director of Special Projects, and now driving Eden’s Costa Rican expansion), Jo Elworthy (Director of Integration), Blair Parkin (leading the Pollination program that is co-evolving new Eden ventures in the UK and overseas), Charles Sainsbury (the man charged with ensuring that Eden walks the sustainability talk), and Ramón van der Verde (Heligan’s Managing Director).

We’ll see where all this takes us, but the adventure made me feel even keener to find innovative ways to converge our different worlds.

As a Chief Pollinator, I was also delighted to encounter evidence around Heligan of a couple of small ways I had nudged things along – via introducing Tim to Peter Byck, of Carbon Cowboys fame, and to Annabel Ross, who went on to co-create the Voices of the Lost Gardens exhibits, with wheeled shepherds’ huts used to immerse visitors in the life stories of a range of wild and farmed animals.

Day 1: Tom, Pauline, Cami and Sophie during Heligan’s magical ‘Lost Supper’
Day 1: Yoshie and Josie, ditto – with Jodie wearing one of the new Volans Patagonia gilets
Day 2: Before our opening session, with torrential rain outside
Day 2: In session with Jo Elworthy, with Louise behind the lens
Day 2: And so it flows
Day 2: On the wings of a pollinator
Day 2: Colour-coordinated – Jo and Josie
Day 2: Credit where credit is due
Day 2: Coco de mer nut
And now breathe: thank you, cyanobacteria
Day 2: Sophie blessed by the Blue (Infinity Blue) celebration of cyanobacteria, which gave us oxygen
Day 2: Louise and Seed
Day 2: Sophie, Josie and Angèle break out
Day 2: Josh breaks out
Day 3: Josie making sense
Day 2: Dinner in Eden Mediterranean biome: Yoshie, Hannah, Josh, Sophie, Tom, Richard
Day 2: Tim and I feeling blue
Day 3: Heligan CEO Ramón van de Velde arrives for our breakfast session
Day 3: Legs, some belonging to Ramón
Day 3: Rhododendrons
Day 3: Rhubarb!
Day 3: Pauline, the Volans beekeeper, with Heligan bee skeps
With Alasdair Moore (Head of Gardens & Estate) and Nichola (#5 and #6)
Day 3: Reflected canopy
Day 3: Skunk cabbage
Day 2: Ransons, or wild garlic
Day 1: wild garlic martinis, during our Lost Supper
Day 3: One of the shepherd’s huts featuring animal stories compiled by Annabel Ross
Final lunch in the Steward’s House
Some of the team preparing to bridge tomorrow’s divides

Uncategorized

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Dr Jo Elworthy says

    5 May 2023 at 5:17 pm

    Dear John and team

    It was a pleasure and an inspiration to see you all again – here’s to next time!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Introduction

I began this blog with an entry reporting on a visit to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, on 30 September 2003. The blog element of the website has gone through several iterations since, with much of the older material still available.

Like so many things in my life, blog entries blur the boundaries between the personal and the professional. As explained on this site’s Home Page, the website and the blog are part platform for ongoing projects, part autobiography, and part accountability mechanism.

In addition, my blogs have appeared on many sites such as: Chinadialogue, CSRWire, Fast Company, GreenBiz, Guardian Sustainable Business, and the Harvard Business Review.

Recent Comments

  • PATRICK DICK on Reminder of Glencot Years
  • Milton Marino Gómez Ortiz on Tickling Sharks
  • John Elkington on Green Swans A “Must-Read”

Journal Archive

About

John Elkington is a world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development. He is currently Founding Partner and Executive Chairman of Volans, a future-focused business working at the intersection of the sustainability, entrepreneurship and innovation movements.

Contact

john@johnelkington.com  |  +44 203 701 7550 | Twitter: @volansjohn

John Elkington

Copyright © 2025 John Elkington. All rights reserved. Log in