For the Love of Sunflowers

I have always been a lover of the sunflower and over the years have had so much pleasure from seeing sunflowers growing in the fields when we travelled through France. Sunflowers have a way of instantly making you feel positive and happy with their big sunny faces smiling up at you.

To share my love of sunflowers I created a range of sunflower jewellery which includes sunflower earrings, sunflower bracelets, sunflower necklaces, sunflower ring and sunflower cufflinks which you can see here. 

Helianthus is a genus comprising of around seventy species of annual and perennial flowering plants in the daisy family asteraceae commonly known as sunflowers. The site of a huge field of sunflowers is very beautiful.

Sunflowers are usually tall annual or perennial plants that in some species can grow to a height of 300 centimetres or more. Each "flower" is actually a disc made up of tiny flowers, to form a larger false flower to better attract pollinators.

The plants bear one or more wide sunflower heads made up of many tiny flowers with bright yellow ray florets, mini flowers inside a flower head at the outside and yellow or maroon also known as a brown/red disc florets inside. 

The majority of sunflowers are yellow but there are now branching out with varieties in other colours including, orange, red and purple. 

Before blooming, Helianthus plant heads tilt upwards during the day to face the sun. This movement is referred to as heliotropism, which continues for a short time when flower buds form and young Helianthus heads track the sun. At night, the sunflower heads reorient their position and face edast in anticipation for the sunrise. Sunflowers move back to their original position between the hours of 3am and 6am, and the leaves follow about an hour later.

Sunflowers have been proven to be excellent plants to attract beneficial insects, including pollinators.

Helianthus are a nectar producing flowering plant that attract pollinators and parasitoids which reduce the pest populations in nearby crop vegetation. Sunflowers attract different beneficial pollinators like honey bees and other known insect prey to feed on and control the population of parasitic pests that could be harmful to the crops.

Imagine my joy when a friend mentioned to me that there is a pick your own sunflower business ten minutes by car from our home in Tunbridge Wells.

A few days later my daughter Eve and I got into my old Beetle and set out to explore it with great excitement.

Groombridge Hill Sunflowers is open daily from 10am - 4pm (10am to 6pm Fridays). There is no need to book, just bring your secateurs but they have some if you don’t. Just wear some sensible outdoor shoes as you will be wandering around in a huge field of flowers.

The prices in Summer 2025 were £2 per stem, or 6 for £10 or 10 for £15.

It was so much fun and there are so many beautiful varieties of sunflower including 'Sunrich Lemon', 'Vincent's Pomelo', 'Moulin Rouge',  'Soraya', Double Quick', 'Tiffany' and 'Hohe Sonnengold'. I had only ever seen the traditional dark centred bright yellow petal variety so it was a real education to see the diversity. It was a dull day with no sun in the sky but who needs sun when you have thousands of sunflowers.

This pale sunflower was very beautiful with its slightly smaller less dense orange centre with petals that started a bright yellow in the middle and became pale at the tips. 

Then there were some bi-coloured sunflowers. I believe this is called Rumi  F1 Bicolor Cherry. These are striking - the petals start yellow, move through red and finish yellow at the tips. These petals are quite painterly and subtle.

In this bi-colour sunflower the petals are less subtle and are more clearly divided in half red at the base yellow at the tips. This sunflower is called The Ring Of Fire