Stunning beauty of gardens both great and small captured by Photographer of the Year winners

International Garden Photographer of the Year 17.

June Sharpe has won the overall prize in the annual International Garden Photographer of the Year contest, which is now in its 17th year. Her inventive image, was of a conifer trees shot in a Kent, England - but transformed into an abstract, wallpaper-like pattern.

"The layered branches of this conifer reminded me of the dancing cranes often featured in Japanese woodcuts," she tells us. But the effect, which also won her the 7iM Abstract Views category was achieved in Photoshop. "I added a fill layer and used exclusion blending mode to alter the colors and enhance the feeling of movement and sense of the ‘birds’ dancing in a fantasy woodland". 

The image itself was shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark III with Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM lens, using an exposure of 1/350sec at f/5.6, ISO 800.

The separate RPS Portfolio category prize was won by Annaick Guitteny with a sequence of six square images of close-ups of plants, covered in water droplets.

Evanescence by Annaick Guitteny was the winner in the Portfolios category (Image credit: Annaick Guitteny / International Garden Photographer of the Year)

The eight other category winners are pictured below…

Flower Meadows of the Plateau by Albert Ceolan won the Wildflower Landscapes category (Image credit: Albert Ceolan / International Garden Photographer of the Year)

Ethereal Nigella won The Beauty of Plants category for Angi Wallace (Image credit: Angi Wallace / International Garden Photographer of the Year)

The Lone Tree by Andrea Graham won the Breathing Spaces category (Image credit: Andrea Graham / International Garden Photographer of the Year)

Annie Green-Armytage won the Beautiful Gardens category with this shot taken in a private garden in Suffolk, England (Image credit: Annie Green-Armytage / International Garden Photographer of the Year)

'Tasty' by Fernando Avanka won Wildlife in the Garden (Image credit: Fernando Avanka / International Garden Photographer of the Year)

Fire & Ice by Drew Buckley won the Trees, Woods & Forests category (Image credit: Drew Buckley / International Garden Photographer of the Year)

Icy Craterium by Barry Webb FRPS, winner of the World of Funghi category (Image credit: Barry Webb / International Garden Photographer of the Year)

Mangrove Tree (From Underwater) won Leena Roy the Plants & Planet category (Image credit: Leena Roy / International Garden Photographer of the Year)

See the IGPOTY website for the full rundown of the winners and runners-up - and for details of this year's contest, which is now open for entries. 

A selection of the current winners is currently on display at Kew Gardens in London until March 10, before moving on to Cambridge University Botanic Garden, where the exhibition will be on display from March 20 until May 7.