The Parish Church of St George the Martyr, Waterlooville

As in previous years, the 2013 Sunflower Race was a keenly fought affair. Putting aside the perennial excuses of slug damage, lack of sunshine and drought, we still had 12 growers contact us with scores on the allotted Judgement Day.

Clearly the fine weather that we all enjoyed through the summer helped produce some fine specimens, and resulted in what we believe is the largest plant ever grown in our competition. Sheilah Hall’s husband, Peter, bought 2 plants this year and both gave colossal results as the picture shows but the highest and this year’s winner took the tape measure up to 14’ 8”.  Well done Peter!  For those that want to try and emulate Peter’s performance, he admitted to having applied fish, blood and bone in the early stages of growth, and the Miracle Grow later on.

Thank you all who bought sunflowers and had a go.  The list of scores submitted is shown below:

1. Peter Hall    14’ 8”

2. Gary (last year’s winner)  10’ 11”

3. Peter Dancer   10’ 3”

4. Gary’s wife (last year’s runner up) 9’ 11”

5. Dawn Carlysle   9’ 1”

6. Peter and Vivien Wakefield 9’ 0”

7. Sandra Hewett   8’ 4”

8. Family Lloyd   8’ 1”

9. Patricia Byrne   7’ 0”

10. Ken Burton    6’ 8”

11. Paul and Patricia Taylor  6’ 4”

12. Jackie Smith    4’ 6”


Tony and Kat Shepherd

Autumn Edition 2013

Sunflower race


Peter Hall and his winning sunflower