Following its success at RHS Chelsea Flower Show in May, our fantastic in-house-bred sunflower, SunBelievable™ ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ has won even more awards and accolades. Proving hugely popular in the US, the new sunflower was awarded the Retailers’ Choice Award at the FARWEST Show in Portland, Oregon, as well as the 2018 American Horticultural Retailers’ Choice Award at Cultivate Ohio. In the UK, at the Horticultural Trades Association (HTA) National Plant Show, SunBelievable™ took gold in the annuals category, as well as the Best in Category (Annuals) and the Visitor Voted Best in Category (Annuals). The long-flowering sunflower also won the 2018 Four Oaks Trade Show ‘Best Plant Introduction Bedding or Pot Plant’.
Our Head of Horticulture, Paul Masters, commented:
“We’re very proud to have won so many prestigious awards for SunBelievable™ ’Brown Eyed Girl’ both in the UK and abroad. To have gained international recognition for our fabulous sunflower is a great success for Thompson & Morgan.”
With online and catalogue sales topping 100,000 plants in the UK, SunBelievable™ is also proving to be incredibly popular in the USA where it has been well received at all the top trade shows and in trials prior to its retail release in 2019.
“Customer feedback for SunBelievable™’Brown Eyed Girl’ has been extremely positive” says Peter Freeman, our New Product Development Manager. “We’ve been amazed at the plants’ performance this summer – particularly through the heatwave and drought conditions. Those that were planted in the first half of the summer are still flowering now!”
At our Floral Fantasia garden at RHS Garden Hyde Hall this summer, at which hundreds of varieties of annuals were on display, SunBelievable™ ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ proved to be the favourite of the majority of the almost 140,000 visitors to the gardens.
Paul Masters also commented that there would be further exciting introductions to come in the SunBelievable™ range. Watch this space!
Sonia works at Thompson & Morgan in the role of press and communications officer. She is a self-proclaimed ‘reluctant’ gardener and is generally amazed if anything flourishes in her garden. Sonia has a ‘hands off’ approach to gardening and believes that this helps to encourage bees, butterflies and other wildlife. (That’s her excuse anyway!)