Undead Garden

This garden is deceased, but has never been more full of life. Autumn has become spring…

In 2023 the Bird Garden at Harewood House permanently closed after 50 years. The birds were re-homed and the zoo shuttered. It has been disused ever since, and the enclosures have become overgrown, creating a surreal non-attraction, where accidental rewilding is caged and unwittingly displayed. The reason for closure was both financial and ethical, with the trust deeming the site uneconomical to bring up to modern welfare standards. It has become a time capsule for an earlier way of seeing wildlife.

Photographing the site also became a way of contemplating something else - decay as a vital natural process, always making way for the new. Abandoned and derelict places often become de facto nature reserves and sites of ecological importance. Seeing this process happen in a series of rotting cages seems to demonstrate the ways in which human beings often block these natural processes from happening - but equally, this could be left as it it is, as an exhibit for showing people the importance of both decay and rewilding to our environment.