Vitacress Sponsors RHS Competition
Vitacress, the UK’s largest grower and supplier of fresh herbs for the UK retail market sponsored the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) competition for the best young herb photographers. The winners have been announced.
This is the first year of the RHS’s herb competition and over 340 entries were received. The competition is part of the RHS Gardening for Schools Campaign, using herbs as a subject was the perfect opportunity to encourage children to explore the outdoors and cultivate a passion for growing.
The winner in the under 11s age category was:
Indra Woodward, 8 years old, London
Photo subject: Borago officinalis, Borage
Runner up: Sophie Henderson, 6 years old, Suffolk
Photo subject: Cynara Cardunculus, Cardoon
The winner in the Over 11s age category was:
Theo Harding-Rolls, 11 years old, London
Photo subject: Rosmarinus, Rosemary
Runner up: Rowan Atchison, 15 years old, Argyll and Bute
Subject: Ocimum minimum Greek, Greek Basil
Vitacress’ Chris Moncrieff commented “Vitacress was proud to sponsor this competition. As the UKs leading fresh herb producer, it is fantastic to see so many children getting involved and interacting with nature and if that’s through photography then that’s fantastic.” The entries were really imaginative and we saw great use of colour and detail. Picking the winners was really tricky.”
Photographers were invited to capture a ‘living’ herb growing in the wild, garden, in a container or in a setting of their choice. Entrants competed for the title of RHS Young Herb Photographer of the Year, and the prize of an iPad Air, worth approx. £300, is awarded to the winner from each age category. The winning photographer’s school in both age groups will also receive £500 of horticultural materials for their gardening clubs. In addition, the runner up in each age category will receive an iPad Mini and £250 of horticultural materials for their school.
The judging panel for the RHS Young Herb Photographer of the Year 2015 included representatives from Vitacress, Jekka McVicar and Lady Bacon, chair of the RHS Herb Group (Wife of Sir Nicholas Bacon, current RHS president) and Alana Tapsell, Schools’ Communications Officer for the RHS Campaign for School Gardening and Jason Ingram who was voted photographer of the year 2014 by the Garden Media Guild
Vitacress is the UK’s largest grower and supplier of fresh herbs for the UK retail market. It is based in West Sussex where it has two nurseries and the herb division, established in the 1960s growing salad crops, which began producing fresh herbs in 1989.
Vitacress supplies over 16 million fresh living potted herbs each year and over 23 million packs of fresh cut and bunched herbs per year.
The company offers a core range of nine different herbs grown in pots and 16 varieties of cut herbs, ranging from popular herbs used in everyday cooking such as coriander, basil, mint and rosemary, through to more specialist herbs such as lemon grass and lime leaves.
The RHS Young Herb Photographer of the Year competition is part of the RHS Campaign for School Gardening which is now inspiring and supporting almost 19,000 schools across the UK with their gardening activities. RHS research has shown that gardening can help children develop by teaching them life skills and improving their wellbeing.