Talk to plants in Geordie accent for quick growth

Linguistic punch

Your plants might not understand your language, but they are sure to catch your accent!

A new unique experiment has concluded that plants like being spoken to - and are particularly partial to a Geordie accent.

Essex and Welsh tones also bear fruit, the Daily Mail reported.

The experiment, carried out at an Essex nursery, found that for reasons only known to themselves, plants don’t like upper-class accents.

Prince Charles, who in 1986 was widely ridiculed for telling how he liked to talk to his plants, should also perhaps garden in silence, the report said.

Gardening website owner Chris Bonnett began by creating ten groups of bedding plants, each containing around 100 plants, and placing them in different areas of his nursery.
He and his staff started to speak to the plants in a variety of accents.

Appropriate TV programmes and songs were also played. In all, eight UK accents were
tried, along with American and Australian ones.

However, it was the Newcastle accent that triumphed, with these plants growing almost 10 per cent more than some others.

“It’s long been thought that plants thrive if you talk to them so we decided to find out once and for all which dialects they respond to best,” Bonnett said.

“After just a few weeks we started to see differences emerging with the Geordie and Welsh groups shooting up while the Chelsea and Mancunian plants seemed to particularly struggle.

“We kept all other variables as constant as possible. So the plants all had the same amount of sunlight, water and nutrients,” he said.

“By the end of the summer it was clear that the accents had a huge effect. There was, more or less, average growth across the Australian, Liverpudlian, Yorkshire and American groups.

“The Geordie and Welsh groups visibly thrived and displayed enhanced growth while the Scottish, Chelsea and Mancunian plants were stunted,” Bonnett added.