Each summer I grow my favorite flower – sunflowers. I never get tired of seeing the tall, bright, blooming faces of each sunflower. Each one happily soaks up the sun, turning and leaning to get every drop of light it can get.

While they can be beautiful to see in bloom, it can be a battle to protect them from hungry animals. Squirrels and deer have always taken the opportunity to munch on my sunflowers, sometimes before they even bloomed. The furry pests boldly venture out of the woods, getting through chicken wire into the garden or sometimes making their way onto our deck to take nibble.

Luckily, sunflowers are resilient plants. Some years when my sprouts were nibbled down to stubs, the stubs managed to sprout a second set of leaves and keep growing. Occasionally, some have sprouted a second flower head.

The other struggle is finding space to grow them. Sunflowers need a lot of soil space for their roots to grow. I plant five to 10 sunflowers each year, but this year I’ve planted a lot more, and I am limited to the small planters I have. There’s not much room in the garden for more than a couple sunflower stalks amongst the vegetables. The garden provides the best protection with its raised bed and tall chicken wire fencing to keep the deer and rabbits at bay. I’m hoping all my sprouts will make it to bloom, but the increased amount may be full buffet for the woodland animals.

This year I’m growing three different kinds of sunflowers. I’m growing the quintessential “mammoth” variants, which can grow up to nine feet tall with 12-inch blooms; the “busy bee” sunflowers, growing four to five feet tall and great for pollinators; and mixed colors sunflowers for some pretty red, orange and yellow blooms.

There haven’t been any incidents so far, but the sunflowers are still small sprouts growing their second set of leaves. My next steps are to separate the flowers into bigger pots because they’re starting to crowd each other. They’re growing quickly and will need all the space and protection they can get.

I’m excited to see the beautiful collection of colors and how tall each one grows.

— Caroline Craig, administrative & events coordinator