Sardinia’s secret gardens

Hanging from a rope on a Sardinian cliff and with the light fading fast, photographer Rachele Daminelli points her camera at a small plant growing from a rock. 

Some of the species she photographs exist only here, on a single mountain or even a single cliff face. Reaching them can involve vertical climbs and adapting to nature’s timetable. 

Not an average work day for most. It’s all part of Seed Traces, an ongoing collaboration with researcher Benedetta Gori which documents Sardinia’s extraordinary plant life.

Sardinia is one of the Mediterranean’s richest biodiversity hotspots, home to rare and edible plants found nowhere else on Earth. Many are uniquely adapted to the island’s hot, arid environment. This resilience makes them highly valuable genetic resources but also vulnerable to climate change.

Daminelli’s photographs move between wide views of rocky outcrops and intimate studies of seeds and petals, revealing both the island’s beauty and the tiny worlds hidden within it. 

Rare seeds are carefully preserved in a seed bank. Others are replanted in the wild, with locals in some cases becoming active participants in monitoring and protecting them.

Speaking about what she hopes the project achieves, Daminelli says: “There are a lot of scientific studies that are beautiful and amazing, but only a few are translated into something that people can really connect with.”