EIGHT-year-old Alice Watkins has been proudly showing off her giant 18-headed sunflower this week which her mum said grew to its size by ‘pure luck’.

Florence Burke, who lives in Littlebrook, Staverton said her green-fingered daughter first caught the gardening bug last year and since then has been helping out with her neighbour’s garden.

“We got out seedling from our next door neighbour and we planted one last year and it was normal sized,” the 47-year-old said.

“But this year she got some seeds from a car boot sale and to start with, we planted it in a pot in our kitchen but then a couple of weeks later it had got so big we had to transfer it outside.”

Since late June, the plant has towered to over eight foot in height and now has nearly 20 heads blossoming from the sunflower plant.

Miss Burke added that her daughter Alice, who is a pupil at Staverton Primary School, is now eager to see if next year’s plant will meet the same great heights as this sunflower.

She said: “It is something I have never seen before and it is quite a specimen that we are rather proud of. We haven’t done anything different to what we did last year but we are going to keep some of the seeds to see whether our sunflower next year is anything like this one.

“Our neighbours had a three-headed one last year and we thought that was amazing so seeing this monster made us think wow, this is the one.

“Alice potters around with our neighbours in the garden and she has some tomato plants and so I think it is great that she takes an interest in gardening at only eight year’s old.”