UK: New sunflower 'blooms well until November'

Thompson & Morgan are launching their latest sunflower. Sunbelievable flowers continuously from June until the first frosts. In trials, plants were still blooming in late November. Over 1,000 flowers are produced on each plant during the growing season.

Paul Masters, T&M’s Head of Horticulture, said: “Sunbelievable is an amazing breakthrough in decorative plants for the garden in an area that has been distinctly lacking in innovation in previous years. We expect this fabulous new sunflower to make a real impact in people’s gardens – its non-stop blooming will appeal to sunflower lovers and gardeners everywhere.”

Sunbelieveable is the product of eight years of work by the Thompson & Morgan breeding team. Head plant breeder, Charles Valin’s vision was to breed a sunflower that was long-flowered and which could be used and enjoyed as a bedding plant as well as in containers.

Charles comments: “I was always disappointed by the garden performance of traditional pot sunflowers. I’ve crossed the very best with the very best to really boost the plant’s performance. I still can’t believe how many flowers this plant can produce! I also realised that it was the energy that the plant put into setting seed that was preventing it from flowering for long. So I aimed to create a new hybrid that would not set seed and would therefore carry on flowering all summer long.”

For more information:
www.thompson-morgan.com/sunbelievable