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Start Snapping: The Garden for Wildlife® Photo Contest Returns this August!
Make sure your cameras are charged and ready to go! The Garden for Wildlife® Photo Contest is just a few months away, and this year, it has all NEW submission categories!
Credit: whyframestudio/Getty Images
About the Photo Contest
This year marks our seventh annual Garden for Wildlife® Photo Contest! This contest celebrates the power of photography to communicate the importance of supporting wildlife where people live. Whether that’s in a local park, community greenspace, balcony garden, or even your very own backyard, we want to see your photos!
You can learn more about the contest, see past winners, and learn about prizes by clicking here!
Introducing Our NEW Submission Categories
This year, we’re giving a refresh to our five submission categories. Explore our NEW categories and their descriptions below.
Native Plants in the Garden
From close-up shots of plants to wide landscape images of native gardens, this category celebrates native plants in all their forms! Images in this category can feature native plants in a variety of settings and seasons (yes, even plants with brown leaves in winter can be joyful subjects for photos!). Not sure how to tell if a plant is native? Use a plant-ID app to learn more about your subject or ask a local expert!
Wildlife in the Garden
Wildlife gardens bring in all kinds of animals including, insects, arthropods, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, and so many more! Photos in this category might be close-ups of wildlife, action shots showing wildlife behavior, or even wide landscape photos featuring wildlife in the frame.
Candid and Funny Moments in the Garden
We’ve seen several chuckle-worthy and candid photos over the years. Maybe it’s a funny face that an animal made when you snapped a photo, a mobile-phone photo that caught a great moment in your garden, or a candid shot of you or someone else actively gardening! It might even be an in-progress portion of your garden that makes you chuckle (we all have those!).
Yearly Changing Category: Small Space Gardens and Habitat
Variety is the spice of life, so we’re introducing a yearly rotating category for added fun! Each year, we’ll select a new theme for this submission category. For 2025, the focus is Small Space Gardens and Habitat.
We want to see your photos of plants, animals, people, and even habitat elements like bird houses in tiny gardens! These gardens could be balcony container gardens, small community greenspaces, urban gardens, and more. Even small gardens can have a huge impact on wildlife, and we want to celebrate that in this year’s photo contest!
Youth Category (Ages 13-17)
For our photographers aged 13-17, we have a special category just for you! Starting this year, all youth submitting to this category will have their submission fees waived!
Check out some of our winners from the 2024 contest above to get inspired! Learn more about these photos here.
Your Photo Contest Questions Answered
Does my photo need to be taken in my own garden to count for the contest?
No, it does not! This photo contest focuses on highlighting “backyard wildlife”, but this does not mean it has to be taken in your backyard. We define “backyard wildlife” to include any animals, plants, and fungi that benefit from green spaces where people are a dominant factor. While this may include your own backyard garden, it also includes places like parks, community green spaces, school gardens, roadside habitat, places of worship, workplaces, and so much more!
These wildlife gardens are incredibly important in human-dominated environments as they provide habitat that may have been destroyed when the land was developed for housing or business. Learn more about the impact of gardening for wildlife here!
Does the photo need to be taken in 2025 to qualify for the 2025 Garden for Wildlife® Photo Contest?
No, you can submit photos from any year! If you’ve been taking nature photos for years, you likely already have quite a few great shots that would fit into our new submission categories. Even so, getting your camera out this summer can be a great opportunity to capture photos that fit our submission categories, especially our yearly changing category!
Where can I learn more about the photo contest?
Learn more about the photo contest here and join our mailing list to get updated when the contest opens for submissions!
We can’t wait to see your photos!
