The Scotsman Festival Sessions: Siobhan Wilson performs FLOWERCORE track Garden

Two years ago, Scottish singer-songwriter Siobhan Wilson gently launched her FlOWERCORE project, a critically acclaimed collection of three EPs linked by a distinctly bucolic and fragrant theme inspired by the beautifully untamed surroundings of her home in the Borders.

The latest stage in this ongoing project is an immersive audiovisual theatre show featuring Wilson performing alongside the Fife-born folk-jazz singer and multi-instrumentalist Niamh Corkey (from 17-19 August) and the Australian contemporary chamber folk duo Charm of Finches (20-22 August). It also features videography and projections of work from a number of talented photographers, including 2026 Landscape Artist of the Year finalist Libby Walker.

“This run of shows is all about trying to bring a little corner of wildlife into the city centre,” Wilson explains. “Celebrating wildflowers is at the forefront of my agenda as an artist because it’s important to protect wildlife and nature, and FLOWERCORE is a little step towards bringing people together to pay attention to flowers in my own musical sort of way.”

The song she’s performed exclusively for the Scotsman Festival Sessions is Garden, which was written while sitting among wildflowers with her beloved dog McTavish in the Borders countryside. It’s spellbinding.

“Garden is about when you start feeling like you belong to nature and wildlife,” she says “When wildflowers are on your doorstep and you spend time roaming outside, things like borders and land ownership can start to feel kind of superficial. We belong to nature and it gives us gardens. Wildflowers and wild gardens are more beautiful!”

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FLOWERCORE live is another chapter in the audio-visual odyssey that’s flowed throughout Wilson’s work, a saga that includes several compositions for television, video games and theatre pieces: “I’ve always been interested in different musical colours.”

She’s also a busy, globe-trotting record producer who was once described as having “great ears” by no less an authority than the late Steve Albini. Wilson understandably counts that as a career highlight thus far, although she’s perhaps equally proud of the time she played a gig in Atlanta, Georgia and told the audience: “Our national animal in Scotland is a unicorn.”

“Award nominations and things have been pillars of some kind of ‘I must be doing something right’ over the years,” she says, “so I’m grateful for them, but what has really mattered to me over the years, a lot more, is meeting people in music who care about the music itself more than the music as a business.”

After the Fringe, Wilson’s FLOWERCORE will continue to bloom with a fourth EP in the series. Nature, clearly, is a never-ending source of inspiration.

“Wildflowers are turning into a kind of lifelong artistic pursuit” she says. “I just can’t wait to sit with my dog again soon in the studio and record the five new flower songs! I will likely get drawing and painting wildflowers too.”

FLOWERCORE by Siobhan Wilson is at Basement at the Gilded Saloon, Edinburgh, 17-22nd August, as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

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