LETTERS: Seeds and cycleways: faith in the future

From Mr Christopher Padley

Sir: Peter Popham unfavourably compares the sums allocated by the Millennium Fund to the Llanelli coastal path, the Kew Gardens seed bank, and national cycleways, with the refusal to aid Cardiff opera house ("No daring, no imagination, just cycle paths", 23 December). It is he who lacks imagination.

What better expresses a "faith in the future" than to secure for it the incalculable treasure of tens of millions of years of plant evolution? This is a store of natural wonders that makes a single building, no matter how grand, as nothing. What can better "witness ... our aesthetic discernment" than that we cherish our landscapes? Can a building, the work of feeble humans, begin to compare with the natural creation of land, sky and sea?

Modern-day champions of the arts, such as Mr Popham, would build temples to the muses while destroying the gardens of the gods.

Yours sincerely,

Christopher Padley

Market Rasen, Lincolnshire