Emily White

Lincoln’s arts and culture centre is hosting an exhibition exploring nature’s resilience to the changing human world.

The ‘Wild City’ exhibition will be held at the Mansions of the Future centre on St Mary’s Street in Lincoln from November 15 to December 16 and will be open Tuesday-Saturday from 10am-4pm.

The exhibition will showcase the work of artist Liz Davis who eight years ago, having been inspired by the 1983 survey ‘Flora of the London Area,’ began gathering plants from within the City of London.

The exhibition will be hosted by Mansions of the Future

Her pressings will now feature in the exhibition, with each plant pressed and preserved with its roots, flower and seeds.

Davis’ survey has led to 150 plants being added to the Natural History Museum’s collection, including specimens featured in the Lincoln exhibition.

Liz’s display will feature wild flowers and plants gathered from within the square mile of the City of London.

To mark the opening of the exhibition, Davis has worked with Lincoln-based herbalist and lecturer Hannah Sylvester to recreate an Anglo-Saxon ‘Nine Herb Charm’ using an original manuscript of several hundred medical potions and the same plants that still flourish in Lincoln today.

Liz Davis said: “Lincoln’s plentiful commons, flora, forna and wild spaces are extraordinary. They contrast with the sites I have historically chosen for my research and documentation.

Liz Davis’ pressings will tell the story of the modern city’s impact on nature

“I am delighted to present Wild City in Lincoln as I continue to reflect upon the fragility of nature and wildlife in our ever-changing world.”

Accompanying the exhibition will be a programme of talks and events including flower pressing and a lecture on medical herbalism with Hannah Sylvester. A full itinerary of the events can be found here.

In supermarkets throughout the UK, we’re used to seeing our fruit and veg individually wrapped in layers of plastic. Often, supermarkets will provide fruit and veg in both packaged and loose form, so why not just ditch the plastic altogether?

Across the world, only 14% of the plastic we use is recycled and over eight million tonnes of this plastic ends up in the world’s oceans. The vast majority of this plastic waste is the (often unnecessary) plastic packaging of food items.

Shelled hard boiled eggs and pre-sliced orange wedges encased in plastic were just a few items The Lincolnite found in store at a popular local supermarket in Lincoln.

The question of whether the UK government should force supermarkets to offer an option of no or eco-friendly packaging for all fruit and veg items is being debated in Parliament on Monday, November 12 in response to an online e-petition signed by more than120,000.

We asked shoppers in the city centre what they thought about the use of plastic packaging and whether supermarkets should be doing more to help reduce plastic waste.

One shopper Diane Shelton said she feels that more should be done by supermarkets to reduce plastic waste, adding that we used to be able to buy our fruit and veg loose from green grocers.

Another shopper Carol Nutting said: “It’s getting away from all the convenience we’re used to, it’s definitely something we all need to work together on.”

Supermarkets like Morrisons and Lidl say they are doing more to combat the amount of single-use plastic in stores such as providing brown paper bags for fruit and veg, and encouraging shoppers to bring their own Tupperware for their goods.