Gigantic pumpkin is Bognor Regis gardener’s latest creation

With just over 200 plots, Amberley Drive is home to one of the biggest allotments in town.

And, somewhere in the middle of all that greenery, a lone gardener is making the veg to match. Armfuls of oversize onions and a corpulent cabbage are just some of the king-sized vegetables Shaun Perryman, 39, has grown in his single year in the ‘big veg’ hobby.

But this year’s towering achievement is his biggest yet: an approximately 140 kilogram pumpkin which, Mr Perryman said, is causing quite the stir

“I couldn’t believe how the cabbage took off and how big it got, but it was literally months of looking after it, getting rid of caterpillars and weeds and everything. So this year I was like ‘right, I can’t be bothered with the cabbage, I’m going to give the onions a try and go for it with the pumpkins’.

“People are just amazed, they’ve never seen anything like it. Obviously I’m not the only giant veg grower – it’s quite a big community- but, around here, I don’t think I’ve met anyone else who does it.”

Although they look delicious, Mr Perryman eats very few of his vegetables and the majority of what he’s grown so far has been donated to St Wilfrid’s Hospice. For him, the joy of big veg isn’t in the eating, it’s in the hundreds of hours of quiet care, gentle nurturing and the sense of giving something back.

“I’ve been growing normal veg for a while, but a lot of it I don’t eat. So when I started seeing giant vegetables, I thought ‘that’s for me. 100% that’s for me,’” He said.

“It’s just somewhere to go where I can get away. I think everyone needs somewhere like that. I can go down to the allotments in the evenings when no one’s there and relax,

“Most of the veg I just give away because I like making people happy. I eat my runner beans and my sweetcorn but I grow so much of everything and I just like seeing the smiles on people’s faces when they get a nice big bag of free vegetables.”