In the Summer of 2016 a keen gardener in Lichfield, Staffordshire, grew an impressive crop of enormous sunflowers. Every day, one of our trustees used to drive past them on the way to work. They reminded him of Sunflower House and gave him an idea. He approached the gardener, who very kindly agreed to harvest and donate all of the seeds from his sunflowers.
We spent the first four months of 2017 packaging these seeds up and distributing them as far and wide as we could in the UK (and, where possible, beyond - see our map below!). We produced more than 3,000 packets, all put together by hand by one family, and all containing seeds from that one garden in Lichfield. Our aims were simple:
1) to get people growing sunflowers; and
2) to raise awareness of Sunflower Children's Hospice Trust.
We'll update this page with photos as our sunflowers grow, and give a small prize to the tallest one. And then, when the sunflowers die, we'll harvest as many of the seeds as we can and hopefully do this all again next year, with many more seeds.
After much thought and deliberation, we have finally decided on the rules for our inaugural Tallest Sunflower competition. These are as follows:
It's that simple, so if you think you've grown a potential winner, get your measuring tape out and let us know how tall it is. The winner will receive a thoroughly underwhelming trophy, and the kudos of being the first champion of a competition which is almost certain to become the stuff of legend for generations to come. If you donate enough money we could probably even be persuaded to name the trophy after you.