No Nudity Among The Sunflowers Please

Stoke Fruit Farm on Hayling Island, off England’s south coast, have been urging visitors to stop posing naked for photographs in their field of sunflowers (Scientific name: Helianthus)

 

The owners of the UK farm issued the unusual request on Facebook on August 11: “Reminder to all we are a family area and please keep your clothes on in the sunflowers! We are having an increase of reports of naked photography taking place and this must not happen during our public sessions please!” 

 

Sam Wilson and sister Nette Petley run the farm that their grandfather set up. It comprises 350 acres, producing wheat, peas, potatoes, pumpkins, squash, sweetcorn, hay – and sunflowers. 

 

The former told CNN Friday that there had been about six incidents of people stripping off among the blooms since the field opened to visitors at the end of last month. 

 

“We’ve always had people take risque pictures but this is the first year it’s been a problem, which is why we’ve put signs up”, he explained. 

 

More so, after “a couple of children saw what was going on” – and as he stressed: “...we just can’t have nudity in public view”. 

 

The sunflowers were first planted by Wilson and his then-fiancee behind the church where they got married six years ago. But the plants did not bloom in time for the nuptials. 

 

Wilson said: “We went away on honeymoon and then my sister rang and said ‘people want to pick your flowers’, so we set up an honesty box for visitors”. 

 

Nothing could have prepared them for just how popular the attraction would become, with people traveling large distances to see the flowers in bloom. 

 

Today, paying visitors are invited to wander around a massive area of about 50 acres, covered by two million sunflowers.