Aberdeen is celebrating multiple wins, including the top prize as Best City, in the annual Beautiful Scotland awards ceremony, at which the city was recognised for its fantastic horticulture and outstanding green spaces.

Aberdeen won the top award at the digital ceremony for the competition following a visit in August by judges Stan da Prato and Andrew Hogarth. The two judges travelled around the city visiting parks, a school, an allotment, and community areas in addition to the David Welch Winter Gardens in Duthie Park.

The judges also awarded the city joint firsts in the Rosebowl 2022 and Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society Award categories, as well as a Silver Gilt Medal for Cove in Bloom and a Cerificate of Recognition for Brighter Bucksburn.

In their summary, the judges said that "Aberdonians value their parks, and this public support has helped persuade decision makers of the value of green spaces despite ongoing pressures on local authority finance. The fact that two councillors took time to meet the judges emphasised this commitment."


Depute Lord Provost, Councillor Steve Delaney, accompanied the judges on their visit to the winning city. He said: "This is amazing news and even better than we could have hoped for although our wonderful Environmental Services team, led by Steven Shaw, communities and army of volunteers across the city naturally gave us every confidence that we would do well.

"It was an absolute pleasure to accompany the judges on their tour of our beautiful green spaces which we now know are the best in Scotland. It was clear that they were very impressed by what they saw.

"My warmest congratulations to everyone on achieving these wonderful boosts for our city."

Councillor Miranda Radley, Convener of the council's Communities, Housing and Public Protection Committee., said: "These are amazing achievements for our city and wonderful recognition for all the hard work of our staff as well as our Friends groups, schools, businesses, communities, especially in Cove and Bucksburn, and the thousands of volunteers put into making our city's green spaces so attractive."

"My congratulations go out to everyone involved for their dedication to making our city look its best."

This is the first year since 2019 the competition has been held in person due to the covid-19 pandemic.

In 2021, a scaled-back version of the Scottish competition was held with discretionary awards instead of category awards as judges could not go out to places. Aberdeen was awarded a gold medal, The Wright Sustainability Award, and Powis Residents' Group also won a gold medal.

In 2020, Aberdeen was a finalist for Champion of Champions award in Britain in Bloom but the competition was cancelled due to the pandemic.

This year, the city was judged on its horticulture and environmental responsibility which is the work carried out for the Council's climate plan, carbon reduction, and other similar projects.

Beautiful Scotland is organised by Keep Scotland Beautiful.