Black Sabbath Music Helps Plants Grow Better [Study]

Playing Black Sabbath’s music can help your plants grow better, according to a study done by gardening expert Chris Beardshaw.

Beardshaw, who hails from the BBC’s Gardeners’ Question Time, claimed that different genres of music will encourage plants to grow at different rates, with heavy metal getting the best results.

An experiment was conducted by the expert gardener’s horticultural students, who used four different greenhouses to test their theories. Beardshaw, who has also appeared on Gerdener’s World, explained:

“We set up four glasshouses with different sorts of music in to see what happened to the plants. We had one that was silent — that was a control house — and we had one that was played classical music, we had one that was played Cliff Richard and we had one that was played Black Sabbath.”

Beardshaw explained that the students tested “the incidence of pest and disease” in alstroemerias. They measured how floriferous (quality of flowers) they were as well as how hardy they became.

Of all of the greenhouses, the one where Black Sabbath was played fared the best. As for the worst? Beardshaw said that honor went to Cliff Richard. According to the expert gardener, “The alstroemerias in the Cliff Richard house all died. Sabotage was suspected but we couldn’t prove it.”

The control house grew as expected. The plants in the classical greenhouse grew slightly shorter because of the soundwaves that bombarded them. The students also saw less pest and disease. But the ones with Black Sabbath blared as loud as possible were the shortest. Despite the height difference, they had the best flowers and showed the best resistance to pest and disease.

The test certainly seems odd, but Beardshaw explained one of his horticultural students wanted to write a dissertation about how music affects plants.

Knowing blaring Black Sabbath helps plants grow better, would you consider hooking up speakers next to your garden?

[Image via ShutterStock]