Camera eye on the beauty of Scotland’s gardens

Hundreds of photographs celebrating the best of Edinburgh’s exquisite gardens have produced seven winners.

The third annual Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) photography competition raised £1200 for the charity’s small projects fund, which will now go to worthy ideas across all four of the RBGE’s gardens.

A total of 387 entries were made across three categories for “garden view”, “plant portrait” and “wildlife”. Plant portrait, by Kikuni Uehara, of Peebles, was chosen as the overall winner.

Inger Kristiansen, membership manager at the Friends of RBGE, who ran the competition, said: “The judges were impressed by the high standard of entries for this year’s competition and the calibre of the photographs made selecting the winners and runners up a rather difficult task.”

Money raised for the fund last year supported projects, including a new picnic area in the Logan garden, interpretation panels in Dawyck and a propagation glasshouse in Edinburgh.

The competition is aimed at raising awareness of the four RBGE gardens and the winning photographs will go on display in September in the Edinburgh gardens’ library foyer along with highly commended entries. The exhibition will then travel to the Logan Botanic Garden in Dumfries and Galloway throughout October, the Dawyck Botanic Gardens in the Scottish Borders in November, and the Benmore Botanic Garden in Argyll in March 2013.

RBGE regius keeper Professor Stephen Blackmore will award prizes to the winners at the end of September before the Friends’ Lecture. This year’s presentation is titled I Take Pictures of Beautiful Things by RBGE resident photographer, Lynsey Wilson.