THE Butterfly World project at Chiswell Green is expected to bring more than £120 million to the St Albans district over a five-year period as well as creating hundreds of jobs. At the launch of the scheme at Sopwell House Hotel last Friday, conservationi

THE Butterfly World project at Chiswell Green is expected to bring more than £120 million to the St Albans district over a five-year period as well as creating hundreds of jobs.

At the launch of the scheme at Sopwell House Hotel last Friday, conservationist professor David Bellamy calculated that 40 per cent of the one million annual visitors to the site would be children. Butterfly World would be the largest project of its type on earth and would help to combat the destruction of butterflies which were being wiped out by pesticides, herbicides and artificial fertiliser.

The man behind the project, Clive Farrell, said it would incorporate everything he had learned about butterflies over the years. He described how the project would have a giant climate-controlled dome housing a tropical rainforest with Mayan ruins, jungle canopy walkways and 10,000 butterflies. On the ground there would be insects including scorpions and giant spiders.

The first part of Butterfly World, which is being built in Chiswell Green Lane on land which once belonged to the Royal National Rose Society, will be the Future Gardens which are expected to open in June next year.

Future Gardens will have a feature garden as well as 12 individually-designed gardens with sustainability at the core of the enterprise. One idea for a garden is to "shrink" visitors so that they can enter through a flower pot and see the garden from an insect's perspective.

The main part of the project including the butterfly biome is expected to be ready by 2010.