FABULOUS PHOTOGRAPHS AT THE BOTANICAL GARDENS

Anne Newland- 2nd place pictures a lone cactus in the Ikara Flinder Rangers National Park Australia

Three Cheers for the Cambridge University Botanical Garden; first out of the slips to throw open their doors for a real live exhibition you can actually go to. All right – it is in the Open Air and what a massive advantage that is – yet even so a huge amount of precautionary procedure has gone into this first public event in Cambridge. Along with the Fen Ditton Gallery, the first prize must go to a stunning show, open to all and valiantly presented in what has to be the most delightful setting for art – anywhere.

Albert Ceolan 1st place shows the destruction from the epic Vara storm in the Dolomites South Tyrol 2018, a natal event- it took 17 lives and destroyed 4 million trees. Mount Catinaccio looms impassively in the distance

Autumn flower by Jacky Parker, a natural first class winner in the Beauty of Plants section of the Competition shows a Rudbeckia in the New Forest on a Lavender Farm she thinks it ‘perfectly shoes the beginning of autumn’

And the International Garden Photographer of the Year Competition throws the whole experience into overdrive. Here are images from the shores of a frozen Finnish lake to the exotic cacti in the Atacama desert. The photographs are both wild and tame’ artfully arranged still lives rival Vermeer’s own . The Botanical Garden as it’s incorrectly known is unique. Where else can you rest after a gallery viewing,next to water and watch the real life exhibits – dragonflies and damselflies- flutter past? The Garden has also provided two outdoor sitting areas with sturdy oak tables for picnickers, at gardenkitchen.selz.com, Arrangements for their reasonably priced dishes (including strawberries and cream and lavish wraps) are simple ‘Just place your order through the Garden Café website by 8pm the day before and then pick up at the Café the next day. You don’t even have to queue for collection, there is a special picnic collection doorbell you can press to have your order brought out to you” and you can settle down next to “the spiky purple/blue flower heads of Echinops ritro which are looking utterly fabulous at the moment.”

Tony Selen black and white section winner in a photograph of Mount Bromo ‘ a venerable active volcano’ in East Java Indonesia

Get down there. Once you’ve paid your entrance fee to the Garden where Charles Darwin and Joseph Banks delivered their world shaking discoveries in botany, it’s free.

And get a move on as it closes in only a month’s time and moves on to a UK wide tour for 18 months, so unless you’re nifty and you want to see these wonders, as Yorkshire woman I am happy to say it’s next stop Barnsley before they appear again.

The photography speaks for itself.