Question about the Garden of Eden for those who know religion/Christianity?

in the Bible, it states when Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden by God for disobeying him, God placed cheribum as guardians of the Garden of Eden to prevent anyone else from entering. What was God protecting exactly? The tree that Adam and Eve ate from? or the Tree of Life?,..moreover, at what point in time did these guardian cheribum disappear from the Garden of Eden. obviously, no one today has came across any purported area of land that is restricted from tresping by Holy guardian cherubims telling them that they can not enter. Its umed that the Garden of Eden may have existed up until the time before Noah's Ark, when God flooded the world, and consequently the floodwaters forever erased the Garden of Eden away from the face of the Earth. The Bible doesnt state this, but thats the only logical explanation that I can see.