Gardening mag grabs major gong
A GLOSSY gardening magazine produced in Ipswich has won a second prestigious award.
The Queensland Council of Garden Clubs has given the Most Popular Gardening Publication 2012 prize to the quarterly subTropical Gardening publication.
Its Karalee-based editor and founder, Paul Plant, is very pleased with the latest award.
"Each garden club voted on their most popular gardening publication," Mr Plant said.
"The content of the magazine was obviously relevant to them.
"We strongly stand by our tag line of 'local advice for local gardeners'.
All the writers are horticulturally trained and actually involved in gardening, and they have to live in a warm climate.
Queensland Council of Garden Clubs president Noel Prior congratulated Mr Plant and his team.
"The popularity of this magazine is due to articles and reports being relevant to our climate and it deals with local issues for local gardeners, resulting in each issue being a valuable reference for all gardeners residing in the subtropics," Mr Prior said.
Mr Plant, a qualified horticulturalist, established subTropical Gardening in 2005 with a circulation of 10,000.
The magazine is sold in Queensland, northern New South Wales, the Northern Territory and the northern regions of Western Australia.
"We've got subscribers in Tasmania, South Australia, Holland, the USA and throughout Asia," Mr Plant said.
"In cooler climates, people have hothouses. Holland is regarded as one of the leading horticultural societies in the world.
"The magazine is high gloss. We use better quality paper and 95% of our readers keep it as an ongoing reference. We specifically write so as not to be linked to a particular month or season, so this allows gardeners to use the magazine 12 months of the year.
While most other gardening magazines have a 'token' Queensland writer, we have a single 'token' writer from Sydney.
The magazine is also the holder of the 2011 Award of Merit for excellence in horticultural media, given out by the Australian Institute of Horticulture.
Mr Plant helped set up the inaugural Ipswich Plant Expo held last March to encourage people back into gardening after the 2011 flood. The expo this year will be held on March 9 and 10.
