Sunflowers aiming high – 54cm is the winner!

After the Easter break, each tutor group was given two sunflower seeds and a bag of compost to plant into containers as part of the House sunflower growing competition. The sunflowers were randomly picked from the packets and the compost was weighed out to be fair!

The aim of the competition was twofold: firstly to help smarten up the outside spaces at school (as part of a wider longer-term project) and secondly to help wildlife. It is a well-known fact that our physical environment is under threat – for example from climate change and use of pesticides. Part of this means that plants and animals are affected and this could be bad for our planet.  By planting sunflowers, which are good for bees especially, we are trying to do our little bit to help. If our pollinating insect numbers are reduced, then our crop yields could fall as there will be fewer insects left to pollinate the flowers which could prove disastrous in the future.

Just before the May half term, all the surviving sunflowers (and there were some casualties!) were brought down to be assessed for a winner.  The tallest sunflower belonged to Mr Weedy’s form (A-WDN) in Alder House who are clearly very green-fingered! The height of the winning sunflower was 54cm.  All the sunflowers were stored in the Japanese Garden over the break to ensure that they had access to rain. Hopefully, when they are a bit bigger and stronger, they can be planted out. Some close runner ups with good strong growth included the tutor Groups: M-OW (Mr Outhwaite), S-TPE (Ms Thompson), S-JSC (Mr Jones), R-TMA (Ms Timney), R-RDJ (Mr Read), R-BLA (Mr Bailey), A-BND (Mrs Conroy) and A-BLD (Mr Blyth)