The Royal Horticultural Society is inviting millions of garden lovers across the country – and beyond – to vote for their favourite RHS Partner Garden for 2024.
Now in its fourth year, the contest continues with the “Feel Good” theme and all voters in the popular RHS Partner Garden of the Year competition will be entered into a prize draw to win a pair of tickets to the RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival in 2025 with a luxury two-night stay close to the showground as a thank you for their show of support.
Last year, with thousands of votes cast, Hidden Valley Gardens, an intimate three-acre cottage style garden in Treesmill, Cornwall, won the overall competition, with a further five gardens winning regional categories.
Previous winners have described how the award has confirmed the appreciation of their hard work shown by visitors. Ian Mabberly, who runs Nant y Bedd Garden in the Brecon Beacons which was crowned RHS Partner Garden of the Year in 2022, said: “We’re pretty sure that the increase in visitor numbers in 2023 must have been associated with the win.
“We know that what we are doing here is greatly appreciated by our visitors from what they write in our Visitors’ Book, and the award confirms that.”
There are 220 gardens in the RHS Partner Garden scheme in the UK and abroad. The scheme gives free access to the garden to the charity’s 600,000 members at selected times of the year. Voting for the Partner Garden competition is open to anyone, however, not just members.
Nine new gardens have joined the scheme this year, including Riverhill Himalayan Garden in Kent, Natural Surroundings in Norfolk and La Mortella in Naples.
Votes can be cast via the RHS website rhs.org.uk/pgoty. Voting is open from 10am on Wednesday 10 April until midday on 27 September, 2024.
Many of the RHS Partner Gardens will also be displaying the link to vote in their gardens, on social media and on garden websites, so it will be easy for visitors to cast their vote for their favourite garden and leave a comment to say what the garden means to them.
Visitors can choose their favourite gardens in each of six regions: Midlands and East Anglia; North and Northern Ireland; Overseas; Scotland; South East and Channel Islands; and South West and Wales.
As before, the gardens will be ranked according to the number of votes they have received relative to their total visitor numbers for the previous year with the comments they’ve received from voters to determine the winner for each region and the overall winner.
The winners, who will be revealed in December, will receive a special plaque to display at their property as well as a professional photoshoot of their garden. Gardens that have won in the past two years will be excluded from this year’s competition.
RHS Partner Garden Manager Helen Feary said: “We’re delighted to be running the RHS Partner Garden of the Year competition again in 2024. Visiting a garden brings so much joy to so many people and it’s wonderful to be able to give people the chance to vote for their favourite ‘feel good’ garden from among the 220 RHS Partner Gardens. The heart-warming comments show us how much these gardens mean to their visitors.”
For more information visit www.rhs.org.uk.
