[The Guardian] Wild about the garden: inside photographer Siân Davey’s sanctuary

Wild about the garden: inside photographer Siân Davey’s sanctuary

The artist transformed a neglected patch beside her cottage, attracting a variety of visitors eager to shed their inhibitions, clothes and anxieties, and whose lives she has caught in striking images that form part of a new exhibition

The photographer Siân Davey was “navigating a family deep in crisis” when her son Luke suggested that they transform a neglected garden outside her rented cottage into a wildflower sanctuary that would draw people in. “And, without any ambition, something in me said a resounding yes,” she says. Together, they set about clearing the plot, researching local flowers and sowing them according to the rituals of a Buddhist faith they both share.

As soon as the plants began to flower, the people started to arrive, shaking off their everyday anxieties and repressions to expose their innermost selves. Many took the invitation literally and abandoned their clothes. Davey planted an old green velvet chair in their midst, for those who found the undergrowth too scratchy, and started taking photographs, which are now on display in a new exhibition near her home on the Dartington Hall estate in Devon.

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