With Greenfingers Garden Re-Leaf Day taking place across the UK tomorrow and over the weekend, participating garden centres are being encouraged to garner maximum exposure for the industry’s main fundraising day in the mainstream media by capturing high resolution, print quality images.

As a charity, Greenfingers rely on Garden Re-Leaf Day to raise most of the funds it needs for creating gardens for children’s hospices, and with 15 promised this year, the success of the event is of even greater importance.  In the past, hundreds of fun, creative and awe-inspiring events have been held in support of the charity – but more can easily be done, say organisers, to get Garden Re-Leaf to a wider audience.

Last year, three garden centres - Littleheath, Willowbrook and The Old Railway Line collaborated with Greenfingers by submitting their Garden Re-Leaf Day photos – which were each taken on a digital SLR camera.  These high resolution images were then distributed to national press and used in promotional literature and posters creating valuable publicity opportunities for both the event and the garden centres involved.

What is a high resolution image?

If you’re looking to get coverage in any type of printed publication, it doesn’t matter how good your image looks in terms of composition – it’s the size of the image that matters most.

How can I tell if my image is high resolution or not?

There are two ways of ensuring your image is large enough to use in print.  One is to check to see if the image has a high enough resolution – 300 pixels/inch being the industry standard.  On PC’s, simply right click the image file, select ‘open with…’ and choose ‘Paint’.  Once in Paint, click on the File menu bar and select properties.  You should then see horizontal and vertical resolution.  On Macs, it’s even easier, double click the image to open in Preview and then choose ‘show inspector’ from the ‘tools’ menu.

An even easier way is to check the size of your image file in terms of megabytes – generally, JPEG images between 1MB and 6MB are ideal for use in newspapers and magazines.

Hornby Whitefoot PR’s Robbie Cumming is fundraising for Greenfingers, along with over 40 others from the garden industry, as part of the Great Garden Re-Leaf Walk – as well as managing the PR and Social Media output for Garden Re-Leaf Day itself.  “The immediacy of social media, and the convenience of smart phones is great for spreading the word online – but we mustn’t forget the power of traditional print media.  We have the contacts, we have publications on board, all we need now are budding and experienced photographers alike to to get involved in creating high resolution images that we can use to get Greenfingers Garden Re-Leaf Day, its participants, and the industry as a whole in front of millions of people.”

Find out more

For up-to-date event listings information, go to www.gardenreleaf.co.uk and search via the navigation bar at the top.  Use the ‘register an event’ form on the website or email Sarah@greenfingerscharity.org.uk or Linda@greenfingerscharity.org.uk if you have yet to sign up for Garden Re-Leaf Day.