As we all know, fresh flowers can make a room look and smell good. They also have some magic power.
Martin lay in hospital for weeks after falling from a building in 2011. He faced a lot of surgeries（手术）and began losing hope. Martin's friends and family members came to visit him. They brought him fresh flowers each day. Then something wonderful happened. Martin's condition started to improve, and he looked towards the future with more hope.
Martin soon realized that other patients around him weren't receiving the same kind of emotional（情感上的）support. This inspired him to go from room to room, giving away his flowers to them. The results were amazing. He watched people's misery turn into happiness.
After leaving the hospital, Martin couldn't forget the power of his flowers. Six months later, to help more people, he started a project called the Simple Sunflower Project. He collected used flowers from some events like weddings（婚礼）and then the flowers were given to people in hospitals and the old people's homes. In the first year, the project served no more than 100 people. But in the following 10 years, it gave away flowers to nearly 30,000 people.
Many studies have found that fresh flowers as well as plants are good for people's health. To test the result, the University of Tennessee Medical Center did a study on the Simple Sunflower Project. Almost 95% of the patients who had received flowers had an improvement in their emotional condition. When staying in hospital, people felt not as comfortable as at home, but the Simple Sunflower Project helped them in some ways. Flowers could make them less stressed and less painful. Patients with flowers had shorter hospital stays as well. Flowers make a great difference.
