Yesterday, we featured hydrangeas; today, we're sharing a photo of a backyard sunflower. Sunflowers are blooming brightly in Greensboro now. They are easy to grow and can be squeezed into just about any patch of soil, as long as it gets full sun. Our sunflower, while far from perfect, volunteered on the edge of our garden and is bringing us great joy. It is about 8' tall and has a 90º chunk that doesn't seem to want to grow, but we love it anyway.
In 2007, Jerry Wolford, reporting in the News & Record, featured a Forest Oaks resident who joined his neighbors in the planting of sunflowers in the community. This man, Rev Som-Pimpong, had a sunflower that actually grew to 11 feet tall (see, here). More recently, in 2013, Joseph Rodriguez featured Brantley McLendon in the News and Record. Brantley lives in Fisher Park and is known for keeping a pocket full of sunflower seeds and planting them every chance he gets (read more, here). Even more recently, an initiative known as "The Sunflower Project" in Greensboro was established on Facebook to help in the growing of flowers in urban communities. Unfortunately, their Facebook page has not been active in 2020.
Greensboro gardeners love sunflowers and there is plenty of room room to start sunflower projects like the ones described above. Sunflowers are great to grow with children as they change rather quickly and are the largest flowers in a garden. Depending on variety, it takes 80-120 days to get flowers from seed to sunflower head. If you have a good sunflower story, please share it with us!
Happy Saturday!
it looks really nice. we have had sunflowers in our garden as well for years and years now and as the climate gets warmer they stay for longer periods of time!
Posted by: r co | Monday, June 29, 2020 at 02:49 PM