Is that a sunflower or a beanstalk? 'Eiffel Flower' soars to 23ft in back garden and heads for world record

By Luke Salkeld
From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

It hasn’t exactly been a blazing summer, but this sunflower doesn’t seem to have noticed.

It has shot up to a height of 23ft despite a distinct lack of the sunshine on which its species famously thrives and without any special treatment.

With no sign of it slowing down, the giant bloom could soon break the world record height for a sunflower of 26ft 4in.

Healthy height: Keen gardener Eve Fielding, of Kent, was shocked to see her sunflower grow to 23ft

The sunflower towers over the back garden of Eve Fielding who expected it to grow no bigger than the 12ft her other efforts have tended to reach over the years.

When it passed that mark and kept going the 48-year-old grandmother, who is herself only 5ft 2in, nicknamed it the Eiffel Flower.

HEAD-TURNERS

• The flowering head of the sunflower tracks the sun’s movement, turning from east to west during the day, a phenomenon known as heliotropism
  
• The oil from sunflower seeds has been used as a treatment for warts, snake bites and sunstroke. One sunflower can contain up to 2,000 seeds
  
• Before more modern materials were available, the pith within the sunflower stalk was used in life-jackets to provide buoyancy because of its extreme lightness
  The sunflower is the national flower of Russia and Peru, and the state flower of Kansas

Mrs Fielding from Margate, Kent, had sown a handful of sunflower seeds as part of a light-hearted competition with her four-year-old granddaughter, and planted this one as a spare.

She said she has watered it every day, but cannot explain why it has outgrown her other plants.

Mrs Fielding said: ‘It’s enormous – I really can’t believe it’s grown this tall. I planted a few seeds with my granddaughter so we could have a race to grow the biggest one.

'This was one of the leftover ones so I thought I might as well sow it and see what happened.

‘I watered it every day, but I didn’t put anything special in the soil or anything daft and it just carried on growing. This is by far the biggest sunflower I’ve ever had – usually they’re around 12ft.

'My neighbours and visitors have all been quite surprised and shocked at the size. They think it’s a beast.

‘I’ve heard of people talking to their plants to make them grow and I’ve never done that, but I have started telling it how well it is doing since it got really big.’

According to Guinness World Records, the tallest sunflower to date measured 26ft 4in on August 17, 2009, and was grown by Hans-Peter Schiffer in Kaarst-Voorst, Germany.

Her secret? Eve puts the sunny coastal weather, a sheltered spot and warm south facing wall down to the incredible growth

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2026191/Sunflower-beanstalk-Eiffel-Flower-soars-23ft-heads-world-record.html#ixzz1VDiFYDsR

At Chelsea Flower Show Small Gardens have Big Environmental Impact

by Bonnie Alter

from http://www.treehugger.com/

Photo: B. Alter

There are other gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show besides the big, glitzy and expensive ones. There are small ones...

So give a Gold Medal to the Winds of Change urban garden which puts its reclaimed, industrial aesthetic first and foremost.

Photo: B. Alter

Its designer has a passion for reclaimed materials and created the garden around a focal point of home-engineered turbines made out of.big industrial cooling fans. He definitely makes a statement--they are unmissable. As is the only prison on site...the old steel shed has a door from a prison. A Victorian safe is used as a tool storage and the water butt is made out of old steel. The fencing is made out of recycled timber and the planting is loose and natural, with vegetables and a green roof.

Photo: B. Alter

This year there is a new category of garden: artisanal. By which they mean natural and sustainable. It is replacing what used to be called courtyard gardens and it is an interesting switch. The gardens are all charming: natural planting, lots of local and native plants, most use recycled materials and all have a cottage feel. However, after a while all seven seem much of the same.

The Postcard from Wales garden embodies the best of the genre. It depicts an old boathouse on the edge of a river; the old boat in the front is a particularly charming touch. The planting is gentle with alliums providing colour, rambling roses by the front door and hollyhocks against the recycled wood fencing, with bits of shells and beach combing findings strewn around. It won a Gold Medal.

Photo: B. Alter

A Literary Garden is another charmer--it won a Silver Gilt award. Inspired and intended as a poet's retreat, the poems and verses have been hand-carved into the bench, bridge and sundial, all to make an atmosphere of reflection and quietude. The carving is done by a master carver who does each piece by hand. The planting style, again, is informal, overgrown, with lots of blue and cream.

Photo: B. Alter

This Korean entrant, Hae-woo-so (Emptying One's Mind) is a bit of a variation: it depicts a traditional Korean toilet (what!). It seems that Korean people believed that going to the toilet was a "cathartic experience and considered it to be a highly spiritual natural cycle." Pictured is the outhouse, which is vintage and ramshackle looking. The planting is mainly green, with some wildflowers, artful pieces of driftwood and moss-covered stones. Winner of a Gold Medal (for shock value alone).

More on Chelsea Flower Show
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Chelsea Flower Show Opens with a Blast (of Wind)

by Bonnie Alter

from: http://www.treehugger.com/

Photo: B. Alter

This year's Chelsea Flower Show in London has been beset by a series of natural problems. First there was the unseasonable cold weather, then the unseasonable warm weather, then the rain drought. But opening day featured glorious sun and celebrities, albeit with gale force winds.

That didn't stop this year's show, now in its 98th year, from being as big (with 17 gardens competing for top prizes) and beautiful as ever. The themes: "wild" rather than formal, vertical green walls, lots of insect habitats, roof gardens and a series of 7 natural and sustainable small gardens. Where to begin...

Photo: B. Alter

You can't miss the B&Q Garden as the spectacular green vertical wall rises to 9 metres. Beside it is an insect hotel which is 5 metres high. And then there is the field of herbs: everything in the entire garden can be eaten. B&Q (like Home Hardware) have done an excellent job of showing sustainability, with wind turbines, solar panels and water butts to collect rain water. Tomatoes and herbs cascade from the vertical wall. There are vegetable plots and culinary herbs as well as fruit trees and lime trees included in this sustainable wonder. It may be considered too corporate since it is pushing the B&Q company line, but it should win a Gold medal.... News Update: Gold Medal winner

Photo: B. Alter

The artistic and aesthetic favourite seems to be the Wild Garden sponsored by the Royal Bank of Canada. Canadians can't take much pride in the splendour since there is not one aspect of Canadian content in it except our good old Canadian dollar. However, it was created by one of the eco gurus of the gardening world and it contains a recycled container that serves as an artist's studio, green roof, native plants combined with garden plants and a lovely stone wall with an insect hotel. It will be reconstructed and relocated to a Wetlands Centre after the show. Definitely a winner. News Update: Silver Gilt winner

Photo: B. Alter

The M&G Garden consists almost entirely of planters that are filled with vegetables and herbs. It is a modern interpretation of the traditional kitchen garden. As well as having raised planters of fruits, herbs, vegetables and flowers, there is a sitting area and a water feature. The raised beds are built from willow and topped with cedar. Cabbages mix with clematis, and beans with roses. It is a bit sprawling and seems crammed but the idea of updating the kitchen garden for modern use is good. News Update:Silver Gilt winner

Photo: B. Alter

This has to be one of the loveliest gardens in the show. The Laurent-Perrier Garden--Nature & Human Intervention (love these conceptual/obscure titles) is the most elegant and sophisticated in design and planting. There is a delicate bamboo structure at the back with a long stream with rocks leading up to it. The flowers are a delicate planting of dusky pinks and browns and creamy colours, planted amidst 11 multi-stemmed trees. There are some huge sculptural stones which give it a Japanese feel, in keeping with the "pagoda" structure. News Update: Gold Medal winner

Photo: B.Alter

Here's a retro, super luxury and super glam garden from the Principality of Monaco. The Monaco Garden is a blast from the past when Chelsea consisted of high-end fantasy gardens (so what has changed?). It was conceived as a way to show how high density living ( Monaco is tiny) can be achieved through roof gardens and balcony gardens, fruit trees and green living walls. Love that swimming pool and the lilac lounge chairs--where is James Bond? News Update: Gold Medal winner

Photo: B. Alter

The most controversial is the Irish Sky Garden, a bright pink pod known as the Wonkavator, containing plants that will be suspended 82 feet in the air from a crane. Created by Diarmuid Gavin, it's being called "lupins in the sky with Diarmuid" and only VIP's can take a ride, 8 at a time, in it. Helen Mirren has been in it, Gwyneth declined. Too gimmicky by far for many, Diarmuid is the bad boy of the gardening world--and relishes it. News Update: Gold Medal winner

More on Chelsea Flower Show
Cold Unseasonable Weather Affects Chelsea Flower Show :
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Chelsea Flower Show Features Vegetables

What a stinker! World's smelliest flower opens for the first time in 75 YEARS

By Daily Mail Reporter

from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

For botanists, it doesn't get more exciting than this - after 75 years, the Titan Arum plant has unfurled its leaves and is in full bloom.

For curious crowds who gathered, they perhaps realised that a once-in-a-lifetime look is more than enough - thanks to its pungent odour of rotting flesh.

The flower, nicknamed 'Corpse flower', bloomed late on Good Friday at the University of Basel, Switzerland and is expected to remain open until Easter Sunday.

Miracle-Gro: The flower opened for the first time in 75 years on Good Friday

The eight foot plant, which is indigenous to Sumatra's rainforests in Indonesia, has the largest unbranched shoot in the world. On average, they bloom once in a decade.

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Titan Arum is coveted by collectors and plant enthusiasts around the world because of its strange blooming patterns.

It produces umbrella-sized petals which open to a diameter of three to four feet.

Its distinctive smell can be detected from half a mile away. The odour, which is usually strongest at night, is meant to attract pollinators such as carrion beetles and flesh flies.

Twelve of them are housed at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the Princess of Wales Conservatory among hundreds of other tropical plants.

Once in a lifetime: Crowds capture Titan Arum in bloom at the University of Basel, Switzerland

Rare sighting: Botanists love the plant because it blooms so infrequently - despite the smell of rotting flesh

When the plants are ready to pollinate, the stem heats up to release a pungent smell, which lasts for about three days.

The largest Arum at Kew gardens weighs 200lb and grows at a staggering rate of a quarter of an inch an hour.

It guzzles liquid fertiliser and potassium each week to keep up its strength while bedded in roomy surroundings.

Sir David Attenborough, who invented the name Titan Arum, was the first to capture it flowering on film for his BBC TV series The Private Life of Plants.

He dropped the plant’s original name – Amorphophallus – perhaps because of the reference to male genitalia.

Beauty: The plant originates from Sumatra in Indonesia

Captivating: Crowds gather as the plant prepares to open its leaves

Tropical Island Infinite Photo

From: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/

Infinite Photographs

Click on an image and dive into a mosaic of hundreds of pictures of marine and terrestrial species found on the South Pacific island of Mo‘orea.

Photographs courtesy the Biocode Project and National Geographic contributing photographer David Liittschwager.

Painting the Town Pink!!!

Colorful Shibazakura (Moss Phlox) flowers cover a hill at Chausuyama Plateau in the Aichi Prefecture village of Toyone. The village and a local company plan to plant some 400,000 of the plants in a 22,000-square-meter field by fiscal 2011. Some 100,000 plants in six different colors, which were planted in autumn 2007, are now in full bloom. (Mainichi)