Nessie Ramm is on a mission to paint the road verges of Britain in exquisite detail onto metal road signs; to render visible the wildness and value of these unloved spaces. Her work is a call to re-evaluate our relationship with the natural world

It all started with a hike in March 2017 on which she discovered cowslips thriving alongside a bleak stretch of A24 dual carriageway in the South Downs National Park.

This was in direct contrast to some of the vast fields, devoid of wildlife, which she had just hiked through. Ramm started looking at road verges wherever they went and the more they looked, the more they saw. Many plants which they had never seen in ‘the wild’ were out there growing in litter-strewn laybys, service stations and unloved scraps of land with names such as Black Down Roundabout, Dunmow South Interchange and Kippings Cross.

Now whenever Nessie is driving somewhere she keeps an eye out for wild plants; unsubtly sneaking frequent photography stops into her children’s holidays. She has grown almost fond of the A21 (my ‘local’) and she has also found some wonderful wild sites at motorway services on the M25 and M4 – yes really!