Whilst the place is impressive from an architectur...

Whilst the place is impressive from an architectural and botanical point of view, the experience for me was let down by the patronizing and political nature of the presentation. Rather than focusing on the interesting scientific aspects of plant life and the ecosystems they inhabit, the site instead peddles a lot of rhetoric about its opinion on sustainability and ethics in a very sanctimonious and irritating manner. I saw no attempt to explain the workings of the natural world to young children (i.e the water cycle, the Krebs cycle, atmospheric respiration, the way energy is used by humans), instead there was a load of preachy nonsense about fair trade (a cause I am sympathetic to) and sustainability which actually said nothing of substance. There was a couple of interesting exhibits such as the way in which the properties of rubber were vastly improved by vulcanization, unfortunately this was the exception rather than the rule. What epitomized the whole thing for me was a cartoon storyboard at the end of the tropical dome which depicted caricatures of our ancestors exploiting developing economies along a timeline which juxtaposed images of money and banks alongside dying crops, this sort of simplistic rubbish does not belong in a public exhibit that has received considerable public money.