As the UK’s best-known horticultural company, Thompson & Morgan is always at the cutting edge of plant innovation and welfare. We strive to give all our plants the best possible environments to grow in and we’re continually looking for new ways of bringing out the very best in our plants before we send them to our customers.

It was suggested in recent research that plants respond well to sound; from simple speech to complicated songs from all eras, so naturally we decided to put this to the test.

The results were quite astonishing!

In our trials, we have established quite quickly that today’s plants, using the latest breeding techniques, actually respond best to modern music. The results were so conclusive that our plant breeding team has set up a sound system in the polytunnels at our plant development site to play a daily Top Ten playlist to all the plants starting at midday when the sun is at its highest. At this time, the plants get maximum light and appear to be most receptive to the music.

Resident Music Expert and former DJ, Kevin Ketley, said:

It doesn’t surprise me that plants respond in this way to music. After all, it stimulates our brain activity and causes us to smile, tap our feet and so on, so plants will naturally grow better in that environment

The Top Ten Songs that our trials showed that plants are receptive to are:

1. Kiss From A Rose – Seal
2. Black Horse and A Cherry Tree – KT Tunstall
3. Iris – Goo Goo Dolls
4. I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair) – Sandi Thom
5. Lemon Tree – Fools Garden
6. Where The Wild Roses Grow – Nick Cave & Kylie Minogue.
7. Flowers – Sweet Female Attitude
8. Supermarket Flowers – Ed Sheeran
9. Bed Of Roses – Bon Jovi
10. Build Me Up Buttercup – The Foundations

Interestingly, as you can see – and hear – the plants seem to respond better to songs that actually mention them! We feel this is really quite a breakthrough and our plant breeding team will be looking for new inspiration in the coming months – they hope to be able to increase yields on root crops by playing subterranean music!

Graham Ward

I’ve been gardening for as long as I can remember, my first earliest memory being planting seeds in my Grandfather’s prestige flower bed and having a prize lettuce growing there, which he proudly left to show everyone.

Since then, gaining knowledge and experience from both my Grandfather and my Father, I’ve continued to garden, both as a hobby and later on as a professional gardener and landscaper for 12 years. I love all aspects of it, from the design and build, to the planting out of summer borders with plants you’ve either grown from seed or raised from plugs. Unusual varieties always catch my eye and I’m keen to try growing them, even if sometimes it means learning from my mistakes.