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 Read the rest of this entry »