2012 Reader Photo Contest

The theme of the 2012 Organic Gardening Reader Photo Contest was “Tell Your Garden Story.” Congratulations to our winning photographer, Layla Aguilar, whose image of a mother and son planting tomatoes in freshly turned soil was selected by the editors as a finalist and won after the completion of online voting. This picture is the intersection of several story lines: one of how a mother passes her wisdom on to her child, another the story of a boy who grows up with a lifelong passion for gardening, and a third the seasonal story of a simple tomato seedling that will grow to provide homegrown goodness for the mother and child. The story in this picture is all about potential, and we salute Layla Aguilar for capturing a moment simultaneously simple and awesome.

As the winner, she will receive an Olympus SZ-10 Digital Camera from Dan’s Camera City in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and a copy of Matthew Benson’s book The Photographic Garden. The runners-up, Betsy Benning and Jacquelyn Wentworth, will also receive copies of The Photographic Garden. Thank you to all who entered.