Anyone is free to enter the International Garden Photographer of the Year, so long as their submissions arrive by the deadline of October 31. So if you have a plant portrait, garden picture or a fantastical botanical landscape sitting on your camera's memory card, now is the time to send it off.
There's a prize for the overall winner of £7,500, while the winners of specific portfolios win £2,000 and a gold medal from the Royal Photographic Society. The winners will also have the honour of seeing their pictures exhibited at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew from February 2019, after which the exhibition will go on tour across the world.
As you'll see from the pictures below, entries go far beyond gardens – the awards are a celebration of nature in every environment, whether wild or artificial. There's a long list of categories you can enter, including 'Beautiful Gardens', 'The Bountiful Earth' and 'Greening the City', and an 'Abstract Views' category which has seen photographers pushing the genre and expanding our perception of nature.
Get more details and enter the competition at igpoty.com – the closing date is October 31.
Wildlife Photographer of the Year: 13 magnificent pictures and the stories behind them
The stories behind these shortlist pictures from the Natural History Museum's much-loved Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition are as
Credit: The Prince of Wales, known as the Duke of Rothesay in Scotland, takes the salute during the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo at Edinburgh Castle. (©Jane Barlow/PA)
Seven superb pictures of the Royal Family by the Royal Photographer of the Year
Jane Barlow of the Press Association was named Royal Photographer of the Year on Monday night. Here's a selection of
Credit: ©Landscape Photographer of the Year awards - Ken Rennie
15 majestic photographs of Britain that will inspire you to enter the Landscape Photographer of the Year Awards
If you've taken a superb photograph of Britain in the past year, you're still in time to submit it to
-
Galls: Nature's most beautiful, horrifying and intriguing parasitesA playground for aphids, wasp eggs, and funghi — galls come in all shapes and sizes
-
The market for super-prime houses in England's biggest millionaire's playground is booming — and this £10m example is one of the bestWhirley Hall is a 17th century building that's a perfect example of how 21st century updates can transform an old home almost beyond recognition.
-
Alan Titchmarsh: 'I am so weary of seeing Lutyens-style benches and chairs absolutely everywhere'A strategically placed chair doubles as a focal point and a spot to rest — but we need to move on from Lutyens-style ones says our regular garden columnist.
-
Blurring the lines between ornament and recreation: Nine of Britain’s best Arts-and-Crafts swimming pondsBefore the vogue for bright blue, chlorine-treated swimming pools, members of Victorian and Edwardian society built naturalistic bathing ponds inspired by the Arts & Crafts movement.
-
Ballynure House: The magical estate that transformed its bramble-covered historic garden into a pollinator paradiseWhere brambles once engulfed the historic gardens at Ballynure House in Co Wicklow, Ireland — home of Clare Reid Scott — colourful flower borders now hum with pollinators. Photographs by Jonathan Hession.
-
Defanging the Gardens Trust will hurt our most precious landscapesThe Government has proposed to remove the Garden Trust's position as a statutory consultee in planning permissions for up to 1,700 historic landscapes and gardens in order to speed up building.
-
‘I was rather excited, not remotely daunted... With hindsight, I should have been': The 25-year creation of the gardens of Glenarm CastlePay a visit to the gardens at Glenarm Castle in Co Antrim — home of Randal and Aurora McDonnell — is hard to credit that nearly all of the present garden was made this century, marvels Kathryn Bradley-Hole. Photographs by Clive Nichols.
-
The pinnacle of the English style of gardening, as fine today as it was a century agoCharles Quest-Ritson has just returned to Great Dixter for the first time in years — and it's 'the high point of all my garden visiting for a long time. I cannot recommend it too highly'.
-
The curious incident of the vanishing glasshouses: Country Life's photographs are all that remains of these awe-inspiring structuresThe ‘winter garden’ and the ‘terraced grounds of exquisite beauty’ were two of Cherkley Court’s featured attractions. They were advertised for sale in Country Life in 1910 — and then they vanished.
-
Eat up your daylilies: The underappreciated east Asian flower that's a marvel in the kitchenMark Diacono was at first suspicious of cutting the stem of a gorgeous red daylily, until he realised how delicious they are.
