Industries finest are announced at Garden Media Guild Awards2014

The Garden Media Guild Awards were held at The Savoy, London yesterday on Wednesday 26 November 2014. Hosted by the articulate James Alexander Sinclair, the awards lunch was a great success with some of the best-known faces and most influential players in the gardening world in attendance. The awards recognise the very best communicators and media professionals across the gardening and horticultural industries.

The Garden Media Guild works to raise the quality of writing, photography and broadcasting in the gardening and horticultural world and works with professionals across all communication disciplines.

James Alexander Sinclair, founder of intoGardens, garden designer, broadcaster, lecturer, blogger, writer and RHS Council member says, “It’s marvellous to be involved with the Garden Media Guild Awards. I’ve been working with the Guild for ten years and there’s always great anticipation surrounding the awards. We love to laud and applaud the best in the industry. It’s also great to be the person dishing the awards out too!” 

Garden Media Guild Awards 2014 winners in full

Reference Book of the Year: Andy Vernon - The Plant Lover's Guide to Dahlias. The Reference Book of the Year award acknowledged the best factualgarden or gardening book not intended to be read all the way through, chapter by chapter. Plant monographs, encyclopaedias, directories and garden guides in a one-off or annual publication were also included.
2013 winner:Christopher Brickell with RHS Encyclopedia of Gardening 

Practical Book of the Year:Louise Curley - The Cut Flower Patch. The Practical Book of the Year awardrecognised the book that best covered the practicalities of a particular aspect of gardening with proven tips, tools and, possibly, illustrated techniques.

2013 winner: Kay Maguire with RHS Grow your own Crops in Pots 

Inspirational Book of the Year: George Plumptre - The English Country House Garden. This award is for the inspirational book that most clearly demonstrates overall excellence in its market. The book’s concept should be a good one (not ‘more of the same’), its horticultural subject matter must be accurate and the writing engaging and making it hard to put the book down. 

2013 winner:Tim Richardson with The New English Garden

Garden Publication of the Year: Gardens Illustrated. This award is for the national or regional gardening magazine, newspaper or gardening supplement that most clearly demonstrates overall excellence, judged from three consecutive issues. The winning publication will have a foundation of outstanding editorial and design, together with a sure understanding of the needs of its target audience. It will demonstrate audience retention or growth, robust market share and competitive positioning, as well as sound commercial results.

2013 winner: Gardeners’ World Magazine

The Dr David Hessayon Garden Columnist of the Year: Alan Titchmarsh - BBC Gardeners' World Magazine: Tales from Titchmarsh. This award recognises excellence in style and content from garden writers who lead opinion in print and/or online, judged from three features or columns. Whether it is a national, regional or specialist newspaper, consumer or trade magazine, or website, judges look for high quality writing in a versatile style.

2013 winner: Alys Fowler, Guardian Weekend Magazine  

News Story of the Year: Matthew Appleby - Horticulture Week: Interflora and RHS draw fire from British growers over £195 bouquet. This award will be made to the writer of the best gardening news story published in any national, regional or specialist newspaper or in any consumer or trade magazine or on any website. The winning story will be well written and get straight to the heart of the story in a concise and pithy way. The reader will be able to quickly grasp the facts and consequences of the story.

2013 winner:Ian Hodgson, Garden News, Disease Threat to Snowdrops 

Journalist of the Year: Val Bourne - Gardens Illustrated: Hostas; The Garden: Pick of the Peonies; The Plantsman: Elizabeth Parker-Jervis. The judges are looking for memorable, distinctive writing that’s original, entertaining and relevant to the reader as well as insight and new ideas. The winner will have the capacity to avoid clichés and recycling to break new ground and be able to demonstrate that their writing has made an impact beyond the bounds of their publication. This award will be made to a writer published in magazines, newspapers or on a website or in a horticultural or trade journal and is judged from three pieces of work. 

2013 winner: Matthew Wilson: Turkish Delight: A Tree Worth Puzzling Over and Financial Times: Japans Rite of Spring

Practical Journalist of the Year: Charles Dowding - Kitchen Garden: Fram Pasture to Plot without Digging; Spuds without the Spadework; Preventing Cabbage Carnage. The winning practical journalist will be able to clearly and accurately explain or describe horticultural techniques. They’ll have the ability to make cyclical, seasonal, instructional content fresh, avoiding ennui and repetitiveness. Their writing style will be as engaging as it is informative and make readers want to go straight out into their gardens to give it a try.

2013 winner: Guy Barter, The Garden: Root Cuttings, Growing Media for Containers, Identifying Fungal Diseases 

Trade Journalist of the Year: Lucy Summers - Garden Centre Retail: Plant Focus - March, April, May '13. This award will be made to the writer of the best trade column or article from a feature or series, published in a professional horticulture or trade journal or website and is judged from three pieces of work. This category is not judged on the design of the page or any accompanying photography but purely the quality of the writing.

2013 winner:Sarah Cosgrove, Horticulture Week, Higher Course Fees Deter Career Changers, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park Contract will Redefine Parks Work, Says Landscape Group, Landform Appointed to Create Gibraltar's First Public Park

Photographer of the Year: Jason Ingram. This award will be given to the photographer who submits a portfolio of eight published garden and/or plant images that celebrate current standards of excellence in professional garden photography.

2013 winner:Jason Ingram

Features Photographer of the Year:Clive Nichols - Ragley Hall. This award is for the photographer who best illustrates an editorial feature, in print or online. The themed portfolio of five or more images will be relevant to the feature, tell the story without necessarily needing captions and represent at least 80% of all the photographic illustrations published in the context.

2013 winner: Marianne Majerus, Garden Illustrated: The Genius of the Place

Book Photographer of the Year:Andrea Jones - The Splendour of the Tree. The winning photographer’s images will stand out from the pack for their skill and brilliance. Their plant images will showcase spot-on technique and original artistic views of the subject and their garden images will celebrate everything that is special about that particular garden.

2013 winner:Mark Diacono with My Cool Allotment 

TV Broadcast of the Year:Great British Garden Revival: Topiary & Roof Gardens. This award will go to the best national or regional TV gardening broadcast of three minutes or more, including ‘red button’ broadcast, broadcast for the first time. The winning broadcast will be topical, seasonally relevant and interesting as well as horticulturally accurate. 

2013 winner:Monty Don, Monty Don's French Gardens: The Gourmet Garden 

Radio Broadcast of the Year: James and the Giant Atlas Cedars. This award will go to the best national or regional radio gardening broadcast, whether a single programme or selected programmes from a series or strand. The winning radio broadcast will be topical, seasonally relevant and interesting. Its presentation will be engaging and interesting to keep listeners tuned in until the end. 

2013 winner:Cherrie Mcllwaine, Gardeners' Corner 

Environmental Award:Stephanie Pain - Kew Magazine: Saving for the Future. This award will be made to the writer, photographer or broadcaster who best identifies and chronicles a project that has had a positive benefit on the environment and our guardianship of it.

2013 winner:Kate Bradbury, The Wildlife Gardener 

The Alan Titchmarsh New Talent award: Lalage Snow -The Garden: Edens beyond the razor wire. The winning person will be new to garden media but will demonstrate the best talent and most potential in his or her field of communication(s). Regardless of role or age, their career will be on a steeply upward trajectory, earning the respect of their peers through their achievements. They will demonstrate an inherent skill for communication, imagination and flair for what they do as well as technical and horticultural accuracy.

2013 winner: Nick Turrell, The Guardian: Tree's a Crowd, Falling in Love Again
and The Daily Telegraph: Pay Cash and Carry your Plants Home

Blog of the Year: Graham Rice - www.transatlanticgardener.com.This is award is for the best blog that showcases excellent and engaging content, judged from viewing the live blog plus supporting entry details.
The winning blog will be entertaining and friendly, giving the reader a real sense of the human behind it and their personality.

2013 winner:winner:James Alexander-Sinclair,blogs.crocus.co.uk/plantsmans

Website of the Year:www.rhs.org.uk. This award will be given to the best gardening website, judged from viewing the live website plus supporting entry details. The winning website will demonstrate success in growing the number of impressions, original users and revenue, as well as the impact the site has achieved, including links from other sites and media coverage.

2013 winner: www.crocus.co.uk

New Media award (App of the Year):George Williams - PlantSnapp App. This award recognises excellence in the development of digital products. It will be given to the best software application (app) designed to be downloaded to a device operating system such as iPhone and iPad or the Android equivalent and flip book effect e-magazines/online magazines

2013 winner: James Alexander-Sinclair & Tiffany Daneff, iPad magazine app – intoGardens

The Lifetime Achievement Award: Christopher Brickell. The Lifetime Achievement Award recognises individuals who have made an exceptional long-term contribution to the gardening media sector and the wider industry. The winner is elected by votes cast by members of the Garden Media Guild.

2013 winner: Stefan Buczacki

The Garden Media Guild Awards 2014 are open to everyone who creates or publishes gardening material, not just Guild members. The awards provide an opportunity for new talent and established players to demonstrate their skill within the industry.

The 2014 Awards Lunch offered a unique chance to network among some of the best-known faces and most influential players in the gardening world.

Sponsors of the Garden Media Guild Awards 2014 include:

•              Briggs & Stratton

•              Hartley Botanic

•              HTA (Horticultural Trades Association)

•              redheadPR

•              Westland Horticulture

http://www.gardenmediaguildawards.com

Like the Garden Media Guild on Facebook /GardenMediaGuildAwards

Follow the Garden Media Guild on Twitter @gmgawards

The Plant Lover's Guide to Dahlias is available from Amazon.co.uk

Ends

For more information contact:
Emma De Maio
redheadPR
Tel: 07921 160 134
Email: emma@redheadpr.co.uk

Editors Notes

Full list of judges:

Val Bourne

Andy McIndoe

Christopher Woodward

Noel Kingsbury

Helen Yemm

Adam Pasco

Tiffany Daneff

Wesley Kerr

Raymond Evison

Paul Loft

Joy Macknight

Andreas von Einsiedel

Clare Foster

Marsha Arnold

Lucy Watson

George Anderson

Lady Ursula Cholmeley

Matthew Wilson

Mark Diacono

Nigel Dunnett

Adam Frost

Jekka McVicar

Chris Young

Mark Fane

Martyn Cox

George Plumptre

Award winners information 
Practical Book of the Year 
Throughout The Cut Flower Patch, Louise Curley looks at what makes a great cut flower, in particular the conditions, soil and the tools you’ll need. There’s advice on what to grow – from favourite hardy annuals, half hardies and biennials to spring and summer bulbs to adding foliage and fillers to balance arrangements. Louise also shows how to sow, how to support your plants and provides tips on weeding, deadheading, pests and feeding.

Reference Book of the Year 
The Plant Lover's Guides to Dahlias is the first in a collection of full colour hardback books in which expert authors share their enthusiasm for - and knowledge of - popular garden plants. The series will grow into a handsome reference library that gardeners will treasure. Andy Vernon’s offering focuses on dahlias, the stars of the late summer border. 
 
Inspirational Book of the Year 
George Plumptre’s The English Country House Garden takes a fresh look at the English country house garden, starting with the owners and the stories behind the making of the gardens. With spectacular photos by Marcus Harpur, the text presents thirty gardens - some grand, some personal, some celebrated and some never-before-photographed - to find out why this garden style is so enduring and influential. 
 
Garden Publication of the Year 
Widely regarded as the ‘Vogue’ of the gardening press, Gardens Illustrated magazine has won widespread acclaim for its superb photography, authoritative journalism and exceptional design. Published 12 times a year and sold in more than 70 countries, it aims to inspire readers by offering a rich editorial mix of remarkable places, plants and people.  
 
The Dr David Hessayon Garden Columnist of the Year 
Alan Titchmarsh is a gardener, broadcaster and novelist. After working as a professional gardener and a gardening journalist, he established himself as a media personality through appearances on gardening programmes. More recently, he has developed a diverse writing and broadcasting career. 
 
News Story of the Year
Matthew Appleby is a garden writer with more than a decade’s experience. He edits Horticulture Week and Garden Retail magazines and contributes regularly to The Guardian, Amateur Gardening and other national newspapers and magazines on gardening. A keen gardener, Matthew cultivates an allotment in Wimbledon, south west London. 

Journalist of the Year
Val Bourne is an award-winning garden writer, photographer and lecturer and she gardens on the wind-swept Cotswolds at Spring Cottage high above Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire. Val writes for The Daily Telegraph, Saga Magazine and many others. She is also the gardening correspondent of The Oxford Times. Val judges the perennial and dahlia trials at RHS Wisley. 
 
Practical Journalist of the Year 
Charles has been growing organic vegetables for sale, without soil cultivation, for thirty years. His current acre of surface composted, undisturbed soil (‘No Dig’ for fourteen years) grows bountiful crops with few weeds. As well as writing books on vegetable growing, Charles contributes articles to magazines including The Garden, Gardens Illustrated, Grow It, National Geographic and the Blackmore Vale magazine. 
 
Trade Journalist of the Year
Lucy Summers is a British businesswoman, writer, television personality and garden and lifestyle guru. She has enjoyed commercial success through a variety of business ventures that embrace landscape design (Winner of Gold and Silver medals at the renowned Chelsea Flower Show London) publishing, (Greenfingers Guides) broadcasting and merchandising. Lucy is a popular speaker and writes across a number of media platforms.  
 
Photographer of the Year
Jason Ingram graduated in photography from Salisbury College of Art in 1992. After three years assisting and two years working as a photographic hand printer, Jason launched his freelance career. Based in Bristol, he travels widely, photographing gardens, plants, food and people for magazines, books and advertising. He also works with Dan Pearson on his weekly gardening column for The Observer.  
 
Features Photographer of the Year
Clive Nichols is one of the world's finest flower and garden photographers. Clive has photographed many of the world's best gardens, including HRH The Prince of Wales's own private garden in Scotland, Lord Rothschild's private garden in Corfu and Lord Heseltine's private garden in Oxfordshire. His work has appeared in hundreds of books and countless magazines, calendars and brochures. Over the past 25 years he has amassed a collection of over 60,000 images.  

Book Photographer of the Year   
Andrea Jones is one of the world's leading plant, garden and landscape photographers. Her pictures have appeared in many books, magazines and newspapers worldwide. These include House & Garden, Gardens Illustrated, BBC Gardeners World, Guardian Weekend and Times Weekend. She has illustrated a number of books - most recently Great Gardens of America by Tim Richardson (2009), Hardscape by Ann-Marie Powell (2001), Virgin Gardener by Paul Thompson (2001), Lost Gardens by Jennifer Potter (2000), Bold Plants and Grasses and Bamboos, both by Noel Kingsbury (1999). 

TV Broadcast of the Year
Topiary & Roof Gardens was the second episode of ten in the Great British Garden Revival series on BBC Two. The episode saw presenter, Rachel De Thame, sharpen her shears to champion topiary, the great tradition of trimming and shaping plants. Meanwhile, James Wong uncovered the hidden horticultural past of the London’s rooftops, while revealing the best plants for a rooftop garden. 
 
Radio Broadcast of the Year 
Professional tree climber, James Aldred tests his skills on a giant Atlas cedar in Morocco, which has been labelled as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation and Nature due to pressures from droughts, grazing, logging and pests. He spends a night sleeping in the canopy of the tree and finds out what can be done to save the ancient woods from extinction. The broadcast is aired on BBC Radio 4. 
 
The Alan Titchmarsh New Talent award 
Photographer, journalist and filmmaker, Lalage Snow graduated from the University of Bristol in 2002 with a degree in ancient history. She worked for national and international publications as a writer before honing her visual skills in 2007 with a Master’s at the London College of Communication in photojournalism and documentary photography, achieving distinction. 
 
Blog of the Year 
Graham Rice’s Transatlantic Gardener focuses on garden plants, native plants and invasive plants. Graham reviews books about plants, comments on wildlife and the smartness and absurdity of plant names and discusses the transatlantic life from Northampton to Pennsylvania. 
 
Website of the Year 
The RHS, Royal Horticultural Society, is a UK charity established to share the best in gardening. Its work is driven by our love of plants and the belief that gardeners make the world a better place. 
 
New Media award (App of the Year) 
PlantSnapp is an iPhone and iPad plant photo identification app that provides the name, care information and an online supplier of any plant you submit.

Connecting customers and plant nurseries through horticultural expertise, PlantSnapp utilises its network of horticultural experts as well as the most up to date technology to identify your plant photo. PlantSnapp then provides links to our HTA certified plant nurseries to ensure the highest quality specimen of your plants can be delivered as soon as possible. 
 
The Lifetime Achievement Award 
Christopher Brickellwas awarded the RHS Victoria Medal of Honour in 1976 for his services to horticulture and the CBE in 1991.                           

Christopher began his career with the Royal Horticultural Society in 1958, becoming director of RHS Garden Wisley in 1969. Between 1985 and 1993, when he retired, Christopher was director general of the Society, representing its interests across the world. As well as lecturing in this country and abroad, he has contributed to horticultural and botanical reference works and has published several books. These include Dorling Kindersley’s best-selling companion volume, the Royal Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers as editor-in-chief.