Sunflowers: Smiles from Your Garden
By Cindy Naas
If I could grow only one food plant in my garden, I think it would be the sunflower.
I have so many uses for these plants that I can’t imagine a garden without them. Here are a few of my favorite uses for these cheerful flowers:
1. Shade for tender perennials - my rhododendron is the jewel of my spring flower bed. It’s a deep rich burgundy and is loaded with blooms for two weeks. However, the tree which used to shade the bed in the middle of the summer was removed by the city, making that area exposed to the hot sun all day long. So, I plant sunflowers around the edge of that flower bed in order to provide shade for my easily scorched plants.
2. Privacy - my living room window faces out onto my alpine garden. My alpine plants are amongst my favourites and I enjoy being able to sit in my chair and look at my garden. I don’t keep the drapes drawn on that side of the house, but next to my garden is a busy sidewalk. Planting sunflowers directly under my window gives just enough cover to keep inquisitive stares out but allows me to look at my garden as much as I want.
3. Food for animals - when the seed heads are mature, sunflowers are the most entertaining plants in the garden. Mine attract birds, but the squirrels also spend hours sitting on top of the flowers eating seeds. The sunflowers next to my living room window are also a great source of entertainment for my indoor cats- they like to spend all day watching birds and squirrels! Don’t forget to harvest some seed heads before fully ripe so that you can dry and then save them for winter. Hungry birds will be happy to eat the sunflowers you’ve saved for them when the garden doesn’t have much to eat in January.
4. Food for us - my children love to eat freshly roasted sunflower seeds. In order to get any for my family, I have to protect them from the squirrels. When the seed head is getting close to ripening, I slit a large paper plate to the halfway point and then slip it on the stem next to the seed head, like a collar. Then, using bread ties, I join the edges of the plate, making it difficult for squirrels to climb across. Another trick you can try is to cover the nearly-ripe seed head with an old leg from pantyhose. That prevents both squirrels and birds from sampling the seeds.
5. Cutting flowers - I like to grow a variety of flowers for making fresh bouquets all summer long, and the ones I most look forward to are my miniature sunflowers. Also sold as florist’s sunflowers, these are pollen free and usually grow several flowers per stem. This allows you to keep cutting fresh flowers while still having lots to brighten up your garden.
6. Sunflower houses - this is probably my favorite project when gardening with or for children. My boys all still have happy memories of playing in their sunflower houses when they were very small, and it’s a tradition I will keep up when my grandchildren begin arriving. In order to create a beautiful sunflower house, you plant a line of sunflowers for each wall of the small house. Find a place to try this where you have enough sun, these plants need direct full sun all day. The size I usually make is a 4 foot by 4 foot square, but you can make the house larger or smaller depending on your own space limitations. Plant a row of sunflowers for each wall of the house, planting them about 6 to 8 inches apart. Once they germinate, you’ll want to thin them a bit if they all germinate, as you don’t want them to be much closer than 1 foot apart.
After the sunflower seedlings are about 6 inches high, plant a morning glory plant at the foot of each sunflower. Keep this area well watered until the morning glories are growing nicely. As the sunflowers and morning glories grow, help the morning glories to twine up the sunflowers. When these two plants are fully grown, you will have a beautiful house made of walls of morning glory flowers and sunflower blooms. These houses are stunning, and you’ll want to take lots of pictures.
Sunflowers really are an amazingly versatile plant, they are easy to grow, and no one can help but smile at a row of cheery nodding sunflowers in summer.
June 9th, 2008 at 9:49 am
The sunflower house sounds beautiful and fun! When we have babies I’m going to give this a try.
June 9th, 2008 at 10:08 am
I am going to make one at a local community centre this summer. A lot of new immigrant moms come there with their young children, and I think a sunflower house is something that would make any child’s day a little happier.
June 9th, 2008 at 10:19 am
I had hundreds of sunflower plants sprout from stray winter birdseed this spring. I’ve let them grow before (a few in a pot) and they did very well, but they were earwig magnets, and the earwigs seem to eat *everything*, so I took many of the plants and scattered them in a field. Hopefully, a few of them took hold. They are a beautiful, bright flower.
June 9th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Hurrah! Wonderful column and we always need people teaching about the joy of gardening with children.
I wrote Sunflower Houses in 1991 and Roots Shoots Buckets & Boots (which also has a different version) in 1999 and since these have been in print I’ve received hundreds of letters, e-mails, and photos of this great project. All of the houses have different variations. A recent one planted corn between all the sunflowers.
Keep up your great work,
Sharon@sharonlovejoy.com
June 9th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Ms. Lovejoy, I was given a copy of Sunflower Houses when expecting my second child. A friend gave it to me as an encouragement to begin a child’s garden in my new house, and after loving it nearly to death, I passed it on to another new mom just beginning her adventures in gardening and new motherhood. Your book was an inspiration to me and so many others, I wish it were still in print. Thank you for stopping in to read Urban Garden Casual!
June 10th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
I also love sunflowers and seem to be able to grow some huge ones in my garden. Only one problem, though — ants LOVE sunflowers. Do you have any suggestions to keep the buggers at bay without use of insecticides?