Alex Babich fled from the Chernobyl Disaster in 1991. Now, he’s heading to the Guinness World Record book for his massive sunflower named “Clover.”
FORT WAYNE, Ind. — An Indiana gardener has shattered the world record for the tallest sunflower.
Named Clover, the flower towers 35 feet and 8 inches above the ground in Fort Wayne, in Allen County.
“There is nothing normal about this hobby,” Alex Babich said in a telephone interview with 13News.
Babich says he has verbal confirmation from Guinness that he has set a new world record with Clover. He said the company is just working on a press release before giving him the official notice.
“I’m the first American to hold the record,” he said. Previous record-breaking sunflowers were grown in Germany or the Netherlands.
‘We are all engineers’
Clover is growing in a custom-made scaffold to support her as she grows. Once giant sunflowers get to about 10 feet tall, it’s very easy for the wind to blow them over and break their stems.
When Babich first started growing the flowers, his goal was just to break the Indiana state record.
“But I accidentally blew past it and broke the national record,” Babich said with a laugh.
Early on, Babich had to figure out ways to keep his sunflowers standing.
“We are all engineers,” Babich says of the group of gardeners who focus on these monumental flowers.
When his first flower hit 19 feet tall, Babich parked his pickup truck next to the flower and then built a wooden scaffold next it with a step ladder that just barely let him reach the flower’s head.
As the flowers got taller, he needed more advanced structures to support it.
“I actually drew this structure on a napkin at Thanksgiving with my father-in law,” Babich said of the structure around Clover.
‘I’m going to pray’
Babich set the U.S. world record in 2022 and then broke it again in 2023. By 2024, he set out to break the world record.
Director Victoria Britton, a Butler University grad and Fort Wayne native, set out to make a documentary about Babich’s attempt.
Bloom tracks Babich’s journey to set the world record. The documentary won awards, but the flower fell short. Far from setting a world record, Babich actually lost his national record that year as his flower topped out well short of 30 feet tall.
The flower was a disappointment for Babich, but the documentary was a joy, and he was eager to back to growing when spring came around in 2025. His goal was to recapture the national record.
But his wife had other plans.
“I’m going to pray that you smash the world record,” Babich recalls her telling him.
Babich said he didn’t think he could do it at first. But when it crossed 35 feet tall on Aug. 22, he remembered the famous quote from when the U.S. Hockey Team beat Russia in 1980.
“Do you believe in miracles,” he quoted. “Yes!”
Whether through divine intervention, Babich’s gardening and engineering skill, or a combination of the two, her wish came true.
“We beat it by five feet and eight inches,” Babich said, while pointing out that is also exactly his wife’s height.
Escaping Chernobyl
Babich was not born in Fort Wayne or even the United States. He was born in Ukraine under the U.S.S.R.
He only came to the United States in 1991, after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 forced him from his home.
“It was not easy getting out of the U.S.S.R.,” Babich said.
Since then, Babich has made a home in northwestern Indiana. He grows far more than just sunflowers: he harvests cherries and pawpaws that he grew himself. Along with lots of vegetables.
In the winter, he even builds his own hockey rink in his yard at the foot of Clover’s support structure.
But the sunflower holds a special place in his heart. While sunflowers are native to the United States, they are the national flower of Ukraine.
That country has been enduring a grinding, bloody war after Russia invaded. Despite extreme pressure from U.S. presidents Biden and Trump, the war continues.
Babich didn’t want to comment on the conflict other than to say “We want the war to end. For the killing to stop.”
‘What a journey it has been’
Home is about more than just a place, or even a garden. It’s about community. Babich is quick to credit his community in Fort Wayne for his success.
“I want to thank every single person who has supported us,” he says.
That starts with God and his family. Then it goes out to the documentary crew that has helped tell his story. But it doesn’t stop there.
When he measured Clover to set the record, Babich was using a cherry picker he had rented from a local business with officials from the county’s department of weights and measured in the basket with him to make it official for Guinness.
“It was a team effort getting Clover the Historic Sunflower to the finish line,” Babich posted on Facebook.
Facebook is where he has gathered support from around the world, in the Indiana Gardening and Addicted to Gardening groups where he found audiences of millions of people.
“What a journey it has been,” Babich posted, thanking everyone for their support.
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