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Frank: South Africa

thebigsunflowerproject

The Big Sunflower Project welcomes participation from around the world. Sadly, due to import and export rules, we are unable to send seeds outside of Europe but that doesn’t stop people joining in, with sunflowers having been grown in many places across USA, Ecuador and Dubai.

Sunflowers

In early 2018, the project received a lovely email and photos from Frank in South Africa – Frank is diagnosed with the dominant form of centronuclear myopathy which made the email all the more special.

Frank grew the sunflowers in his lovely garden in Durban and they were subsequently eaten by the local troop of Vervet moneys, making their daily trek across the yard.

Vervet monkeyVervet monkeysVervet monkeys

Katie

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Katie lives in Harehills, Leeds and took part in The Big Sunflower Project in 2017. Below she writes about taking part in the project.

I took part in the Big Sunflower Project after a friend I met through a local growing group sent me a link on Facebook. I live in an inner city area of Leeds and although I had dabbled with growing herbs and edibles I’d never really bothered with flowers much and had honestly never grown a sunflower in my entire life. I registered my interest and then one day two little packets of sunflowers came through my letterbox. I felt a wave of excitement, it was miles better post to receive than the usual bills and junk mail we all get these days.

Sunflower

I couldn’t wait to get started so I went out into my little garden and began to gather together my little pots and compost. The three Romanian children next door were looking a bit bored and asked me what I was doing. I invited them to grow a sunflower each. They got stuck in and we planted eight and labelled three with their names which they took them home. Their mother helped care for them but we had mixed success with our first attempt as only a couple germinated (who knew sunflowers could be so tricky?)! We had enough seeds left to have another go and this time more children on the street, who had heard about the sunflowers, wanted to get involved. I’d read somewhere that soaking them overnight could help so we tried that and had much more success the second time round. The Harehills sunflowers seedlings began to grow and grow and grow.

The children on the street started to get very competitive. There was a definite sabotage attempt across the road where a child poured rancid milk on his sister’s sunflower so that one had to go in the bin. For a while the smallest child on the street had the biggest sunflower but once the sunflowers were planted out all that changed. The sunflower belonging to the quiet middle child next door overtook us all, he was so proud. Growing sunflowers had ignited such a passion for gardening in these youngsters and at watering up time each day I had to manage a queue of very eager volunteers. All this gave me the confidence to run a summer holiday workshop outside the local library. They had been given three huge planters and wanted to grow edibles in them, I suggested edible flowers and berries. We held a planting day with children from the centre and some of the young growers from my street and we arranged the plants into three edible faces.

Sunflower

Off the back of all this we had help from the council to install a Community Planter in a grey corner of Harehills which was prone to fly tipping. We decided that it would be nice to grow some pollinator plants in it to attract bees and butterflies to the area. As this is at the top of our street, the children I grew sunflowers with also got involved. This growing army of budding gardeners then went onto plant 5000+ daffodils in the area and now we are trying to get permission to plant some fruit trees in public spaces too. Those little sunflower seeds really worked their magic to increase communication, inspire confidence and start to bring the diverse community of Harehills together again.

Thank you very much for letting us be a part of this, I do hope we’ve helped support you in your mission to raise awareness. We would love to get involved with the project again next year and I’m already thinking about having a pop up workshop at the library to raise awareness of centronuclear and myotubular myopathy and so more children (and adults!) in Harehills can have fun with sunflowers.

 

 

 

Meleena (Fulbourn Primary School)

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To be honest I had never heard of The Big Sunflower Project and I had most certainly not heard of centronuclear and myotubular myopathy before 2017.

I received an email through school about taking part – I run a primary school gardening club and I thought “Yes, why not get involved”.  What a great way of combining growing something from seed and explaining how some peoples’ bodies do not grow strong because that have rare disorders.  A few of the children struggled to understand fully the impact of centronuclear and myotubular myopathy (quite complex when you are only 5) but they all grasped how some people are born different and have illnesses or disabilities.

The sunflower seeds arrived in their little brown packet and were eagerly received by the gardening club children.  Some of the children had not grown sunflowers before and to which ends we set about planting up one seed in a pot for each child in the club to take home and nurture.  The home results were mixed!  Some were forgotten and left without water, some were planted out too early and eaten by slugs, some were dug up by cats!  The ones that were given care and attention grew big and strong and added a splash of colour to the children’s garden.

The remaining seeds were broadcast sown in an area that had been dug over in our wild life area.  The seed were added to by a local farmer and the results were quite astounding.  A whole host of sunflowers that Van Gogh would have been pleased to paint.

We subsequently harvested the ripened heads (after explaining that each seed has been formed by an individual flower – wow!) and they are drying in our poly tunnel ready for planting again next year.  We will also pass some of the seeds on to other local schools and hope to raise awareness of The Big Sunflower Project for 2018.

Sunflowers grown at Fulborn Primary School

Nish

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Nish lives in South Oxhey in the UK and took part in The Big Sunflower Project in 2017. Below he writes about taking part in the project.

My favourite flower are sunflowers. I also have a belief that whatever you sow into the ground, you have a chance that it may grow regardless of the external conditions. It just requires a little bit of hard work and a lot of faith.

Sunflowers are significant in Hindu culture too. The symbol of the sunflower is known as the flower of the Sun (Suryar Mukki). The male Hindu Sun God (Surat dada) is worshiped through the sunflower and thus all the female Goddesses also love the sunflower. So in our Hindu culture if you are a devotee of a Hindu Goddess then it is custom to adorn their photo or statue with a sunflower…. it will please the Goddess very much and the male Sun God will provide equal blessings towards your home and family.

Goddess and sunflower
I have grown sunflowers in the past and they have given me so much joy. My family love sunflowers too. Especially my niece and nephew who have witnessed the tallest sunflowers grow in our garden this year. That is all thanks to The Big Sunflower Project.

The sunflowers have been a major blessing to me. Everything I could have wanted and much more. It’s also been quite spiritual for me too. The sunflowers have given me so much happiness especially at times when I’ve been down or at my lowest.

I have thoroughly enjoyed seeing the sunflower varieties bloom this year. The anticipation and excitement has given me so much happiness and sense of youth too. This year has been exceptional.

Thanks to the free seeds from The Big Sunflower Project I have been able to grow exotic and tall sunflowers this year. Two plant pots produced the tallest and highest yield of sunflowers. I am truly humbled and grateful to have been gifted the seeds. I’ll never forget how much happiness you have given me and my family in 2017. Thank you.

Nasreen and The Friends of Vale Park: Portslade

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A few seeds arrive in the post and cheer me up right from the start .. hope is a wonderful thing.

It seems like I planted 100 or more, straight into the ground and pots, with children and old of all ages,  at groups in children centre, making seed bombs with scouts, in the park, in people’s homes, at our local corner shop, in cracks along the wall.

I walked with seeds in my pocket and then they popped up! Time for nurturing and protecting .. wind and slugs and weed killer man from the council were watched by me!

The plugs gave me pleasure and a topic to talk about with strangers along the way.  Soon everyone was involved in watching hoping and protecting! An army of sunflower watchers!

And then they bloomed! Some tall, some red, some short, some multi heads.

And now it’s time to draw smiley faces in them .. and messages in larger heads! Like hope.

Seeds are collected wrapped up for next year .. some given to birds. Thank you for sharing the sunflowers to promote awareness. You spread smiles as well as awareness. x

 

To learn more about the Friends of Vale Park, visit their website below.

Conrad and the sunflower

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In 2013 an email arrived out of the blue, it told the touching tale of a child born with myotubular myopathy and a sunflower. Thank you Emma for taking the time to write, your kind words and for sharing lovely story with the world.

After trying for some time, last July, my husband and I found out I was pregnant. Earlier the same year my husband and I had some stumps ground out of our lawn leaving a few substantial piles of dirt in the yard. In one of the piles a sunflower grew – seeming to come from nowhere. We enjoyed the sunflower all summer and into the fall.

When our precious Conrad was born he was not breathing and was floppy. Long story short, after genetic testing we learned that Conrad had myotubular myopathy.

In my frantic search for information about Conrad’s condition, I came across the Information Point and read about the Sunflower Project. In that moment I knew that our mysterious sunflower was God’s way of telling us that He already knew what Conrad had and that he was preparing the way for Conrad’s life even while he was being knit together in my womb. Even when it seems that nothing is fair and the world does not make sense, God is in control and He has a plan for our darling little boy.

I am learning already that boys with MTM and the families who love them are very special people. Thank you so very much for all the work you have done to raise awareness about centronuclear and myotubular myopathy and for being here when I and my family needed you.