The Wild Resistance by Alina Hibbert

One plant every other year goes extinct, in 16 UK counties, across the 20th century - State of Nature

The wild resistance is a body of work that encompasses wild flowers a platform to speak and show their natural beauty. The resistance in this particular project is a group of plants refusing to accept that they are called weeds - or in fact myself as the photographer denies that this term is being used for something so beautiful.

The term weeds has been around in horticultural language for centuries and it has never really been questioned until recently. There is no such thing as a weed, these plants are simply being appointed this name for growing in places they shouldn’t. However, these plants should be commended for the adaptability they develop in our ever changing world and being able to grow in the most unusual places.

Those who own a garden, or even any space to practise horticulture, have been conditioned to rip them from life to keep these spaces neat and tidy. It’s time to not let this outdated practise impact our way of gardening. More now than ever people are becoming aware of how important it is to have sections of these spaces to be left ‘wild’ or ‘overgrown’ for the local environment.

These wildflowers have been here a lot longer than most decretive plant species brought over seas, meaning that there’s a vast amount of wildlife that need these wildflowers in order to live. The great thing about these plants is that it isn’t hard to get them to grow or maintain. In fact you could most likely grow a lot of these wild flowers for free! The trick for this is to just leave a space alone and wildflowers will start to appear.

For myself, the more aware of these plants I became (certainly even more so doing this body of work), I could not stop seeing them. They always amaze me where and how they grow and making sure to stop and observe their beauty that would most likely been missed by many people. I feel that I have been rewarded with a body of work that nature has presented to me and a new perspective on these overlooked and bad mouthed plants.