Forget ‘Jack and His Beanstalk’ – meet ‘Alfie and Everyone’s Sunflowers’

By timesecholife on in All News, Community News

Seven-year-old Alfie Pearson started planting sunflower seeds as part of a family lockdown activity with his mum Jessica and dad Mark. However, Alfie, who normally attends Cheadle Primary School, then wanted to share his gardening joy with others and has been leaving potted sunflower seeds out for his neighbours and other members of the community to collect and subsequently grow their own sunflowers.

A young green-fingered resident is sharing his floral joy with others to help enhance community spirit during this surreal time.

Seven-year-old Alfie Pearson started planting sunflower seeds as part of a family lockdown activity with his mum Jessica and dad Mark. However, Alfie, who normally attends Cheadle Primary School, then wanted to share his gardening joy with others and has been leaving potted sunflower seeds out for his neighbours and other members of the community to collect and subsequently grow their own sunflowers.

Furthermore, Alfie – with the help of his parents – has started up a ‘Cheadle Sunflowers’ Facebook page so that he can see pictures of everyone’s sunflowers growing. The page already has 123 members.

Alfie’s mum Jessica said: “The idea started when we decided as a family to have a sunflower growing competition between us all at home during the Covid-19 lockdown.

“When we came to pot the sunflower seeds we decided we had far more than we could grow in our own garden.

“I suggested we could give them to people, but Alfie was worried about not seeing them growing so Alfie’s dad, Mark, suggested making a Facebook page for people who collected them to post photos for Alfie to see, which we called ‘Cheadle Sunflowers’.

“Alfie loved the idea and said it would be a kind thing do to and would make people smile and that he would love to see photos of his sunflowers growing.

“He is very excited about seeing photos on the facebook page.”

Alfie has had a huge response so far with more than 70 sunflower seeds being collected, and also more than 10,000 likes on a Facebook page called ‘Family Lockdown Tips and Ideas’ after his mum shared his idea on there.

Jessica said: “Alfie has now said he would also love to see photos of other peoples sunflowers growing, not just his own on the page.

“Alfie very proudly takes the tray of sunflowers outside every morning and keeps a close eye on it throughout the day and has started a tally chart to record how many sunflowers are collected each day. We have incorporated this into his school work.

“He has even had a couple of small thank you gifts which were totally unexpected.

“So far, 70 sunflowers have been collected from our house, including one by a nurse who commented on the Facebook page that it gave her hope.

“When we told Alfie what she had put, his response was “Thank you for getting a sunflower and thank you for helping all the other people.”

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