A while ago Veddw Garden was declared one of the 100 best gardens in the UK. Even better, it was also one of the THREE best in Wales.
Wow.
A while ago, when lockdowns had ended, the National Gardens Scheme voted Hillcrest Garden the nation’s favourite Garden (I think Wales was the relevant nation.) –
And in 2022 Nant y Bedd was awarded Partner Garden of the Year by the RHS:
Then in 2023 Highfield Farm Garden was declared the nation’s (Wales and the Borders) favourite garden, by the English Garden Magazine/National Gardens Scheme and Sisley Tours (all together):
As you may have gathered by now, this is one of the favourite games in horticulture in the UK.
It starts with getting a notification from some organisation that you have (somehow) got shortlisted for an award and that people will be voting for the winners. We once wondered about thinkingardens doing a best gardens award. But we realised that there was no way that we could afford to send a panel of judges to every worthwhile and possible garden. Could we have asked people to volunteer their votes? Well – that would be a bit random? (We settled on one occasion to have people write and declare the best garden they had visited that year and why was it the best)
You’re usually invited to solicit votes to assist your chances.
We were notified and invited to do some soliciting, and I felt horribly uncomfortable about that. I imagined that if I appealed on social media for votes some people would vote who had never been to the garden, simply out of good will. But as Veddw’s publicist I decided I had to, and you see the result.
Our local garden society will also solicit votes for a local contender and perhaps people appeal to all their friends and relations to help. All other ideas gratefully received.
It’s a kind of British mania perhaps?
After all, everyone is aware of Chelsea and its awards. There are many more. Historic Houses in the UK take it in turns to be Garden of the Year:
There are various sort of random ones:
And we mustn’t forget the garden designers:
Maybe it all started with vegetables? 
With vegetables we do generally learn how the prize has been earned – usually size.
It’s a total mystery what the gardens are shining at. There are no tick boxes to identify various merits, generally no specific declarations of what is worth the award or a visit. Having lots of plants or flowers may be mentioned.
Strangely, I think if anyone was found to be soliciting the judges of the largest veggie competition they would get banned for life.
I’m not sure how I feel or think about all this.
Clearly if we bully enough people into voting for us I feel chuffed. And also, if rival gardens (and that’s an interesting concept I must address another time) get an award I may feel horribly churned up and jealous. But I’m also uncomfortable about the soliciting, and the role and purpose of these things.
Because, while there is clearly a gain for the awarded garden – publicity which may bring much needed and welcome visitors to a garden, – the principal point is the gain for whatever organisation is making the award. If you’re not in that organisation you may be the favourite or the best in the world but you won’t win. The organisation name gets splashed around with media coverage – and these days, social media coverage – of the event. The award is announced. Awarding is filmed. Hopefully people gossip about it and cheer a lot on social media and in the garden societies. All useful publicity.
You know, gardeners do the sweating, making, opening, and then they get used. Willingly, I grant, mostly. But I guess that’s what it’s about.
Anything like it in America?
For some years, Anne, your existence as a writer seems based on others valuing your critiques of gardens. And you so desperately seem to need validation of your own garden. Could you survive in garden-making for your own satisfaction? Are you able to boost your personal garden-making joy by vowing to burst a goiter of competitive bile that you seem compelled to share in myriad publications?
I don’t know, Eric. I think I’m just not a very nice person.
Eric, certainly both garden making and the rhetoric of garden writers merit considered criticism. However, the crass character assassination you offered in your response served no helpful purpose. Your response speaks more to your inadequacies than to anything else.
Thanks, Jenny. (I’m still not a very nice person)
I don’t know who this guy is but he obviously doesn’t know Anne’s work. Anne has rarely critiqued gardens. What she has argued for, particularly through Thinkingardens, is that gardens deserve to be critiqued as an art form as other art forms are critiqued. Thinkingardens does carry critiques of gardens as well as a lot of other intelligent writing about gardens and the gardening world.
What Charles said.
What Anne does – possibly better than any garden writer I have ever met- is display incredible courage in saying what many are thinking, but do not dare say because it more often than not questions establishment thinking. A brave stance doesn’t mean she’s never wrong, it simply means she’s willing to ask the question; and perhaps more importantly, debate the issue with those who wish to abandon inch-deep thinking and engage. Perhaps you don’t realize just how rare that is in media Eric, and what the cost can be. Question awards? Who in their right mind questions such a thing without the specter of future lost awards hovering over one’s head? Quite frankly, she didn’t even go as far as she could have with this particular post.
Awards are wonderful, yes. They make one feel validated and officially recognize one’s work as worthwhile in the eyes of others who look to greater powers to decide what is good and what is not — and they give you something to put on your CV.
However. They can also be affected by organizational politics, personal bias, and other, even more arbitrary reasons; and the giving of them can be used as a marketing arm of the organization in question – and a moneymaker. It’s okay to question the process and put the question out there for readers to discuss. A clumsy personal attack on Anne isn’t the way to do it. – MW
Thank you Anne!
For both your beautiful garden, and for giving me a new way to look at mine.
Love your writing.
I think there are two camps when it comes to this sort of thing. It’s lovely to be nominated for something and no doubt great to win, but if you’re nominated but don’t have a chance, let’s say a small garden without much of a fan base, then it must also be galling to see the same places win these public votes each time.
Now yes, I’ve tended to be in the latter group, the ‘bridesmaid and never the bride’, when it comes to competitions; I won second place in a beautiful baby competition when I was six months old but it’s been going down hill from there! I’ve also been in a small business where someone had the bright idea of an ’employee of the month’ competition… collectively we shot that down by voting for someone the manager hated.
For what it’s worth I wonder if these magazines couldn’t change things around a bit? Maybe people could nominate their favourite gardens to be featured in the magazine, and the most popular or compelling option gets an article written about them? Maybe gardens under a certain acreage could be nominated so that smaller gardens get a look-in? These ‘top 100’/’top 10’/’best places to visit’ just seem like lazy magazines padding out pages.
(But I’m sure it’s lovely to win!)
The NGS and RHS are not just magazines. How would you raise their game, Ben?
In our suburban community in Ohio, we have annual garden awards based on curb appeal. The judges are members of the community’s Beautification Committee, volunteers who advise the local government on landscape improvements and oftentimes participate in those projects. There’s an evaluation form that the judges use in an attempt to make the process fair, and not personally biased by opinions like, ‘oh I love masses of petunias in a front border.’ Nominations are made by homeowners themselves, or neighbors or friends, or someone who drives by every day and appreciates their effort. A sign is then placed in the front yard for several weeks, pictures and interviews are published in local papers and recipients are honored at a Council meeting. I received this award several years ago, and was gratified that members of my community appreciated all the work that went into creating and maintaining my gardens. My only ‘complaint’ is that you’re only allowed to win once, so I won’t have bragging rights or that lovely sign in my yard again!
This seems to be much more rigorous and considered than our august institutions manage!
I judged a community garden competician last summer. Every garden we went to had smiling and very proud gardeners who had done individual and interesting things in their gardens. All were very different so challenging to judge. Call me a wimp but I thought they all deserved recognition and felt bad voting for the obviously ‘designed’ ones (those were the marking criteria). Would rather judge the biggest vegetable. No personal preference just fun.
Vegetables must be easier. Probably have to be free of slug damage and obvious nibbling…..
I was invited to visit one of these award-winning gardens in the UK some years back and was left wondering how in the love of god the garden had merited any sort of award. Previous experience, here in Ireland and over 30 years ago, was of being invited to enter such a competition by local gardeners and competitors and of then having the gall to actually win the competition which led to a backlash of such bad feeling that we vowed to never again be involved in any such event. “Cut-throat” comes nowhere near the atmosphere in that competition!
But gardeners are not supposed to be competitive!
Oh, you know better than that!
I do.
First, Anne, I can attest to the fact that you are a nice person having met you. Truth and stating one’s opinion is often mistaken for mean spiritedness.
I have long felt that with gardens and with garden writing there should be anonymous critics, much like a food critics, who travel in anonymity to gardens and also who review gardens books with freedom from prejudice and having any worry about hurting the feelings of one’s peers. There are principles of design which, when followed, lead to well designed and pleasing gardens. That said, originality always counts in my book. I can appreciate the gardens of Versailles, Butchart and Blenheim Palace for their architectual precision but the monochromatic parterres of bedded annuals leave me cold. Show me the hand of the gardener and I am often captivated.
Being a critic leaves one open to the most hateful and useless criticism often from those who will not even reveal themselves by name. Thank you for the thought provoking post…as always.
Thank you for this kind comment, Layanee, and I do so agree. I sometimes dream that I will see such a thing before I’m dead.
Now, you travel quite a bit and observe and think a lot………
Anne, you are completely and amusingly honest in your book title, The Bad Tempered Gardener, a witty book from which I gleaned a lot, even though you know we disagree on a couple of things (edging lawns and ground elder ;-)). I bought the book because of the title, knowing nothing else about you.
When I write in my blog about little local garden tours, I never say anything critical even if I dislike the garden, to not hurt the feelings of the gardener who will probably read it and who didn’t bargain on being critiqued. I just don’t have much to say about a garden I don’t like.
Yet when after a local tour, a friend said she disliked a garden where paths came to a dead end, with no visual reward at the end, after having to push through foliage to get there, I thought the garden owner might have been interested to hear about it. (I didn’t pass it on though.)
On a tour, I prefer to see gardens made by an owner rather than a professional design company, even if they are humble and flawed.
But when one puts one garden out there for a contest, or when one’s garden is a paid design or famous, it seems fair that criticism be part of the assessment.
I think that point about dead ends illustrates just what is to be gained from some honest discussion of gardens. That might have led to a change which could have delighted the garden owner just as much as it improved garden visits there for everyone else…..