Chennai Blooms Gold: The Sunflower Movement Painting the City Yellow!

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Chennai is turning yellow quite literally. No it’s not the CSK fever but this is Sunflower fever and the city could soon be called The Sunflower City.

It all began with Shefalii Dadabhoy, a garden enthusiast who fell in love with the yellow flower after she planted one for the first time at her garden in Nungambakkam. Soon she wanted to paint the city yellow. Now her garden has hundreds of flowers in a 450 sq ft area, tracking the sun up high. Shefalii told tellmystory.in “Sunflowers need a lot of sun and Chennai gets plenty of it. She added “Kashmir has Tulip, the north east has Cherry Blossom and don’t you want the whole of Chennai to bloom with sunflowers?”.

Shefalii’s initiative has turned into a movement. At least a hundred sunflower gardens have come up in Chennai at homes, offices, schools, terraces, balconies and even a petrol station at Tindivanam, 125 KM away. V K Girish Pandian, who owns Nayara Petrol Pump says “I want travelling customers to our station leave the pump with a refreshing energy seeing the sunflower. A dash of yellow optimism always makes the journey bright”.

If you want to join the sun flower journey, you could sign up on their Instagram page Chennai.sunflowercity where enthusiasts share images, videos and their sunflower stories.

Shefalii now plans to encourage the Chennai Corporation to introduce the sunflowers at the Ripon Buildings and its hundreds of parks dotting the city.

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