8th GHS Annual Essay Prize

The Garden History Society has now launched its Eighth Annual Essay Prize, with a later entry date to enable students to work on their submissions over the Easter holidays. Entries can be submitted up to and including 30 April 2012. The prize is open to any student registered in a bona fide university or institute of higher education, or any student who has graduated from such an institute in the past twelve months. With the recent demise of so many post-graduate garden history courses the GHS is delighted, as it always has been, to receive entries from related departments such as geography, art history, history, architecture and archaeology.

Submissions can to be be 5000 to 6000 words and the only restriction on subject matter is that it must be of relevance to garden history. The Society’s Essay Prize was established to encourage vibrant, scholarly research and writing and these qualities are reflected in the winning entries.

The prize includes a cheque for £250, free membership of the society for a year and consideration for publication in the peer-reviewed, scholarly journal Garden History. All previous winners have been accepted for publication and often the best of the non-winning entries are invited to submit to the journal; several entries from previous year’s competitions are currently in preparation for publication in forthcoming issues, or have already been published.

Download the Entry Form & Submissions Guide

The Essay Prize is supported by NFU Mutual

Katie Campbell writes:

The 2011 annual GHS Essay Prize was won by Karin Seeber from Bristol University. There was a very strong field this year with entries from as far afield as Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, Sheffield and London universities, but Seeber’s piece on the Mount at New College, Oxford: ‘Ye Making of ye Mount’ was the unanimous winner. The judges were particularly impressed with the way the author went back to original sources, re-examined and reinterpreted them, and discovered new pieces of information along the way. The essay challenges accepted theories, presents a new interpretation of the Mount and in so doing makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of mounts in general and the New College Mount in particular.

The level of scholarship in the other entries was also very high, with some excellent social history, good use of primary sources and wonderfully dynamic writing. With the demise of several Garden History courses this year, the entry criteria for the prize will probably be broadened out next year, so interested parties should watch the GHS website in the autumn to see if they will be eligible to submit to next year’s competition.