12 breathtaking images to inspire you to enter the International Garden Photographer of the Year
Entries are open to discover this year's International Garden Photographer of the Year – and the pictures on this page give you some idea of the incredible standard that of the competition.

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.
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Toby Keel is Country Life's Digital Director, and has been running the website and social media channels since 2016. A former sports journalist, he writes about property, cars, lifestyle, travel, nature.
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