Great grandmother amazed by 'abnormal' sunflower

"I could have called it Jack, because it's like Jack and the Beanstalk. It's not a monstrosity, it's just so tall."

Gwen Foster, who is just over 5ft (1.5m), struggles to see the top of a sunflower she grew outside her home, which she believes is twice her height.

The 95-year-old, from Ashbourne in Derbyshire, was given two seeds by her neighbour, and described the flower as being "really abnormal".

When asked what the secret might be, Foster said she had mistakenly given the sunflower a drop of tomato feed, but she had only done so once.

Foster said some of her neighbours had commented on the sunflower.

She added: "I don't think they can believe their eyes. They're wondering how long it's going to keep going.

"It's something different and I'd like people to know, because where I am in Ashbourne nobody else can see it."

Her first taste of growing sunflowers came when her great-grandson did so at school, and he gave a sunflower to her, but that specimen did not reach the heights of her most recent effort.

Foster said she was given two seeds by a neighbour, one of which grew to about 10ft (3m) and the other 4ft (1.2m).

However, the taller sunflower stem does not have a large flower to match.

Foster said: "I was hoping it was going to be one of those great big [ones] like a dinner plate, but it's a small flower."

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