The Garden Media Guild Awards – also lovingly known as the gardening ‘Oscars’ - are back, and this year the awards roster has seen some changes in a move to ensure that they best reflect the ever-changing garden media landscape. 

Writers, photographers, broadcasters and social media influencers from across the industry are invited to enter, with new awards ensuring a warm welcome for everyone from newcomers to established voices. This is your chance to celebrate and promote your work. In fact, entering an award can help you re-evaluate and benchmark your work, with shortlisted entries often seeing their careers transformed as a result of the exposure the awards can provide.  

Mike Palmer, Chair of the Garden Media Guild, said: “There is no question that the media landscape has changed dramatically over the past decade, and our awards – like any other awards that celebrate its media - need to reflect these exciting changes. Our updated roster now encompasses a much wider pool of talent, and I believe we are on track to deliver the most relevant awards possible.”

All the changes have been carefully considered and debated within the Garden Media Guild committee and are the result of discussion over several Zoom meetings. The participants were originally Mike Palmer, Alexandra Campbell, Chris Young, Lexi Gee, Anisa Gress, Stephen Studd and Barbara Segall.

WHAT ARE THE NEW CATEGORIES AND WHY WERE THEY CHOSEN?

Garden Video of the Year (sponsored by Charles Dowding) replaces the ‘Vlog of the Year’ and means that the Roy Lancaster Award can be dedicated solely to professional filmmakers. Video has represented the biggest single growth area of the media in the past 10 years, so it felt logical to ensure that the GMG Awards were reflective of this.  

Digital Gardening Writer of the Year (sponsored by Honda) replaces Blog of the Year and includes the new growth area of newsletters (e.g. Substack) and other online garden writing (e.g. the digital versions of magazines and newspapers).

Social Media Communicator of the Year has been divided into two awards:  Individual Social Media Influencer of the Year (sponsored by Thompson & Morgan) and Brand Social Media Influencer of the Year (sponsored by The Garden Press Event), the latter a result of the 2022 award entries which saw an influx of brands using GMG members to supply the content and going beyond publicising their brand to create genuinely good gardening content. With many other media awards acknowledging the creativity of brands in using social media to educate and inform generally, now felt like the right time for the GMG Awards to do the same. It’s also worth noting that it is both difficult and unfair to judge individuals against brands, as the aims and resources can differ greatly, hence the need for two categories.

WHICH CATEGORIES HAVE REMAINED THE SAME?

Whilst changes are afoot, rest assured that many of our most beloved and coveted award categories remain the same. Those returning in their expected form are The Peter Seabrook Practical Book of the Year (sponsored by Gardena), The Garden Book of the Year (sponsored by STIHL), The Garden Publication of the Year (sponsored by Johnsons Lawn Seed), Practical Journalist of the Year (sponsored by Cobra), Gordon Rae Photographer of the Year, Features Photographer of the Year, Portfolio Photographer of the Year, The Radio Broadcast or Podcast of the Year (sponsored by the HTA) and The Alan Titchmarsh New Talent Award (sponsored by Miracle-Gro).

There may be a few alterations in the wording describing them or on the entry forms to make categories clearer.

WHICH CATEGORIES HAVE GONE?

After much deliberation, it has been decided that the Website of the Year and Cover of the Year have been removed from the awards roster in 2023. This is due to the low number of entries. A good website is now easy to achieve, and Cover of the Year only applies to books and magazines, which are a much smaller proportion of the media than they used to be. Additionally, it is difficult to judge book and magazine covers against each other.

The’ Blog or Vlog of the Year’ has also been replaced by new categories. It used to work as a category because both were early new media platforms and were usually based on personal stories. Now they have diverged, become more professional and are too different to be compared to each other fairly in a judging process.

Journalist of the Year has also been cut as it duplicates the Dr David Hessayon and Practical Journalist of the Year awards.

This means we were able to introduce new categories that reflect the media platforms of today, offering members more options to win awards.

UPDATED CATEGORIES

The Beth Chatto Environmental Journalist of the Year is now The Beth Chatto Environmental Award (sponsored by the Beth Chatto Foundation) to reflect that those entering may not be strictly ‘journalists’. Instead, they could be working across several media, including visual ones.

The Lifetime Achievement Award has been renamed The Outstanding Contribution Award (sponsored by Westland). ‘Outstanding contribution’ has always been in the wording of the Award, and removing the word ‘lifetime’ eliminates any kind of age discrimination.

The Roy Lancaster Broadcast of the Year is now for professional film and TV programmes only, transmitted via a national TV channel or global streaming platform, not YouTube videos. The judges said it was too difficult to judge one or two-person productions against a professional team.

The Dr David Hessayon Garden Writer of the Year is the new reiteration of the ‘Columnist of the Year’, updated as the committee felt that ‘columnist’ was a confusing term and not as relevant for today’s media.

Find out more

To find out more about the Garden Media Guild Awards 2023, including sponsorship opportunities and to book your tickets to this year’s event, please visit www.gardenmediaguild.co.uk/awards