Sunflowers

Wild sunflowers start popping up in our yard each spring, and we let many of them grow big and tall. By summer, they’re towering over the garden—bringing beauty, vertical interest, and a strong, grounding presence. But these sunflowers are much more than just pretty, sunny faces. They’re soil builders. Nutrient cyclers. Pest managers. Pollinator magnets. They show up with a cheerful, vibrant energy and always offer more than they take.

Why We Welcome Sunflowers to the Garden Ecosystem

Sunflowers thrive in Central Texas, especially during the blazing heat of summer when most crops are barely hanging on. They don’t mind our heavy clay soil, and once they’re established, they ask for very little—maybe an occasional drink of water. In return, they give back abundantly, offering beauty, resilience, and so much support to the garden around them.

We plant sunflowers for many reasons:

• For the Pollinators. When sunflowers bloom, the pollinators show up to the party. Native bees, honey bees, butterflies. They all love the abundant nectar and pollen.

• For the Birds. Once the flowers fade and the seeds set, finches, chickadees, cardinals, doves, and all sorts of birds come in to feed. It’s one of the easiest ways to support local bird life while adding beauty to the landscape.

• For the Soil. Sunflowers have long taproots that break up compacted clay and help bring nutrients up from the subsoil. When we cut them down, we leave the roots in place to decompose and feed the underground life.

• For the Shade. Sunflowers can act as natural umbrellas in the garden, offering quick-growing dappled shade. This makes it easier to tuck tender seedlings into the garden in the heat, and keep them going. And if you find a plant needs more light as it grows, just snip a few sunflower leaves to open up the space.

• For the Spirit. There’s something about the way sunflowers move with the light, how they hold themselves tall and bright, that brings immediate joy.

  
  

  You can also think about sunflowers for bean trellises, bouquets, tomato supports, decoy plants for squirrels, and an easy way to support bee health. And they surely serve many other a functions in the food forest ecosystem that we are only just beginning to observe.  

We often hear a distinct chirping noise outside our kitchen window and every time we look, sure enough - it's a cardinal perched in some sunflowers keeping our grasshopper population in check. This is always a good reminder that our garden supports so many more creatures than just us. No need to panic at the first sight of a garden pest -- just bring in diversity and let nature do it's thing. 

Once we get to the part of the summer where the sunflowers are dry and crispy, we resist pulling them. Instead, we leave them up quite a bit longer, providing afternoon refuge for the many varieties of birds who come to feed on the seed heads. Eventually, once most of the seeds have dropped or been eaten, we'll clip the plants at the base and let the roots rot in the ground, adding nutrients to the soil. Then in the winter, the sunflowers will start popping up again on their own. We'll curate the space around seedlings that will grow up to be helpful summer shade, and the cycle continues. There is beauty in the "seedy" garden. It's fertility, abundance, life.

• Here's a video we made all about wild sunflowers, which we welcome as volunteers in our garden every summer.

Here's a video we made about wild sunflowers, which we welcome as volunteers in our garden every summer.

We've also grown these wild sunflowers alongside cultivated varieties of sunflowers as well as tithonia.

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