Our house is oddly positioned to the street frontage. Our front door is actually on the side of the house but there is a sliding glass door at the front which goes into the master bedroom.
The room get smashed by sun all day long so we wanted to create a bit of protection against the sun and also design our garden so people wouldn't go and knock on the bedroom door. We wanted something that was fast growing and didn't want to go with a lilly pilly (Nathan hates them).
I went to our local nursery and found some good edible screening plants I got one plant (a white Aspen - white fruit that kids love apparently) but wasn't sure about what else to add in there to fill the space, it was clear the tree I bought was not going to grow fast and get us through summer months.
We toyed with the idea of putting up a trellis and growing cucumbers, beans and loofah. It wasn't until we got some free sunflowers from the local herb farm that it clicked. We could grow a forest of sunflowers!
Ivy picked out the sunflower seeds and we ended up with 3 different varieties, Russian Giants and some hybrid ones - Double delight and teddy bear. Ivy carefully planted out the seeds and every day we would go and check on the progress of the flowers. Ivy is very proud of her sunflowers and everyone who comes to visit gets a tour of her sunflower forest.
We ended up with 59 plants, and some having multiple flowers per plant - the result is amazing. Sunflowers make everyone happy, and we've even busted the tradies next door taking selfies with some of the monster heads. And the chickens will be happy when they are done.
We're now in the process of doing some succession planting to get another crop in before the end of summer and I am even contemplating attempting to grow them all year around. We will collect the seeds of the biggest and best plants and see what we get.
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