The Hunter Region Botanic Gardens held the 11th instalment of their annual photography competition in September with the images on display this month.

Toronto resident Kevin Stokes entered his image of a Verticordia ovalifolia, better known as a feather flower, and won the electronic digital imaging section.

He said it was hard to choose what photos to enter, so he chose the ones he liked the most and best fit the criteria.

As chairman for the gardens, Mr Stokes worked to change the competition to make it more accessible for photographers to enter.

He said one of the changes was renaming the competition to The Bruce Stephenson Photography Prize, to honour Mr Stephenson, a long-time volunteer.

The competition provided the gardens with a big display.

"The competition provides an avenue for people to display their photos and in turn raise awareness of the gardens and the work we do here," he said.

Since 1985 Mr Stokes has seen the gardens go from an unmaintained property to housing 18 themed gardens ranging from succulents to grevilleas.

Mr Stokes said they had collected plants for specimens and it was an ongoing process to document and photograph them.

He said the photographs provided by guests and volunteers helped keep a record of the large collection of plants, not only in the gardens but from all over the Hunter.

A total of 57 prints and 10 digital images of mostly Australian plants were submitted and can be viewed or bought in the gardens' gallery.