The sunflower seeds will be offered to customers in packs of ten by checkout colleagues after they have finished their shopping and included within Morrisons online shopping orders. Morrisons Community Champions will also be working with schools, care homes and community groups to distribute the packs and plant the seeds in their local areas.

Customers can plant the seeds in pots at home and watch them grow into dwarf sunflowers which will be between six and 14 inches tall.

Rose Morgan, Community Champion at Morrisons Peckham store, came up with the idea to help customers plant hope for a brighter future as lockdown restrictions start to ease.

Rose said: “Everyone is emerging from lockdown in different ways and I wanted to give my customers fresh hope and food for the heart by putting smiles on as many faces as possible. I had the idea of using sunflower seeds to represent this new beginning and emailed David, our CEO, to tell him we’d be giving some away in our store in Peckham. I’m so happy he liked the idea and am very proud that it will now be taking place in all Morrisons stores.”

Morrisons will be giving away the 2.5 million packets of sunflower seeds to customers in all 497 stores from Monday 12 April. They should be planted in a 6-inch-diameter pot at a depth of half an inch and will begin to sprout in two to five days.

David Potts, Morrisons CEO, said: “This has been a very difficult year for our country and this winter has seemed especially dark and tough. So as spring arrives, and with Covid seemingly in retreat, we want to help celebrate the growing sense of national optimism by planting these sunflowers across the UK, representing the brighter and lighter times of hope ahead.”