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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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
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Credit: ©Landscape Photographer of the Year awards - Ken Rennie
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If you've taken a superb photograph of Britain in the past year, you're still in time to submit it to
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A Buckinghamshire mansion built for the speech therapist who set Churchill on his path to greatnessPenny Churchill takes a look at Rignalls, a classic Arts-and-Crafts home that looks like it's stepped out of the pages of an EM Forster novel.
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Constance Spry, Harry Styles and rescue dogs: Florist and founder of the Wild at Heart Foundation Nikki Tibbles’s consuming passionsNikki Tibbles reveals the possession she would never sell and who would play her in a film.
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The best rhododendron and azalea gardens in BritainIt's the time of year when rhododendrons, azaleas, magnolias and many more spring favourites are starting to light up the gardens of the nation. Here are the best places to go to enjoy them at their finest.
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Great Comp: The blissful garden flooded with rhododendrons and azaleas that's just beyond the M25Each spring, Great Comp Garden — just outside the M25, near Sevenoaks — erupts into bloom, with swathes of magnolias, azaleas and rhododendrons. Charles Quest-Ritson looks at what has become one of the finest gardens to visit in Kent.
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'I'm the expert who wrote the RHS's guide to roses — here's why pruning them right now is almost certainly a terrible mistake'More roses die from over-pruning than any other cause so what’s the reasoning underpinning this horticultural habit? Charles Quest-Ritson, the garden expert who wrote the RHS Encyclopedia of Roses, takes a closer look.
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Forsythia: The spring flower that's a ray of sunshine — and a foolproof option for novice gardenersForsythia are often sniffed at for being too brassy, but there is a lot more going for them, says Charles Quest-Ritson, although don’t plant them next to clashing pink-flowering currants.
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John Morley: A brush with the artist who changed the world of snowdropsTilly Ware meets the artist and galanthophile John Morley in his Suffolk garden, home to the oldest snowdrop nursery in the country.
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Alan Titchmarsh: I went a bit mad ordering bulbs — and I'm not even a little bit sorry I didOur columnist's splurge in the autumn is now paying off with spectacular irises across his garden.
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Dawn Chorus: How to travel around the world in 19 flowers and the Mini Moke that took St Moritz by stormWhat do Charles Dickens, Henry VIII and Ellen Willmott all have in common? They all appear in a new book chronicling 19 flowers and the people responsible for bringing them to the UK. Find out how to get your hands on it, plus, we reveal why a rare Beach Boys-inspired Mini Moke turned up in a Swiss ski resort and a few of India Knight’s favourite things.
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How to make a gloomy city garden into a haven of colour and natureTiffany Daneff discovers how to transform a typically dark London back garden into a light-filled green haven that is always in use. Photographs by Clive Nichols.
