Choose Your Country
Roses and photography share something special in common. Both are about capturing light and emotion at just the right moment. When a gardener raises a rose, it grows into more than a plant. It becomes a story. When a photographer frames that rose, the story is preserved. That's what our Jackson & Perkins Photo Contest has always aimed to do: give our rose-growing community a stage to share their vision, and build a visual archive of beauty that lives on beyond seasons.
Jackson & Perkins traces its roots back to 1872, when Charles H. Perkins and Albert E. Jackson began a nursery business that would evolve into one of America's most iconic rose brands. Over the decades, catalogs, displays, and rose gardens have brought the beauty of roses to life in vivid and memorable ways. The company's historical gardens in Newark, New York once hosted tens of thousands of roses and drew hundreds of thousands of visitors each summer. In that context, a photo contest is a modern extension of a long tradition: capturing and sharing the gardens, the blooms, the human devotion behind them.
While not every past photo contest is archived publicly, each contest continues this legacy by inviting our community to share their best Jackson & Perkins rose photos. Winning entries become part of a collective story, showing how our roses perform and how gardeners care for them. Each image is a snapshot of garden beauty, saved to be enjoyed again and again.
Roses reward the lens because they have layered petals, graceful lines, and rich color gradients that translate beautifully in any light. Beyond form, they carry meaning too: love, remembrance, celebration. So rose images resonate long after the petals fall. Their seasonality adds depth, too; each bloom offers a unique interplay of texture, shadow, and tone that keeps photographers returning to the garden, camera in hand.
Think in layers. Foreground leaves, the bloom, and a softened backdrop create depth that feels immersive. Off-center placement gives the image breathing room, while gentle leading lines—an arching stem, a path of buds—invite viewers deeper into the frame. If you grow climbing roses or floribundas, consider a sequence: a tight petal study, a mid-shot of the plant, then a wider garden context. Together they tell a fuller story.
Jackson & Perkins has cultivated roses and the stories around them for generations. Our photo contests carry on that tradition, showcasing roses through the eyes of the people who know them best; the growers who tend them. Each selected image becomes part of a shared archive that reflects real gardens and real results, season after season.
If you've submitted to a recent contest, thank you for adding your vision to this ongoing record. If you're considering a future submission, know that your photo contributes more than a single, beautiful moment; it becomes a reference and inspiration for others who are choosing varieties, learning light, and discovering their own garden voice.
Gardens evolve. Plants mature, beds are redesigned, and weather writes its own edits. A photograph anchors that evolution: it captures what worked, what bloomed, and how your care shaped the season. When your image appears alongside other Jackson & Perkins roses, it joins a community record of performance and beauty creating a practical archive for gardeners, representational meaning for the brand's history, and a personal legacy for you.
Over time, these photos become a record of beauty and care in gardens everywhere. They show the roses and the devotion of the gardeners who grew them. That’s a legacy worth saving.
Small touches like accurate names, clean compositions, steady focus help your work shine and make your photo more useful to others.
Every season brings new blooms and new perspectives. Your photos help us share that beauty responsibly and accurately, rooted in the experience of real gardeners. That is the heart of our promise: Real Gardens. Real Results.
Your viewpoint matters, and your photos help tell the story of our roses.
Frame the moment, tell the story, and let your garden's work live on, picture by picture.
