My kids always want to grow a giant sunflower variety, so we usually end up choosing one of those. We also love growing a dwarf variety of sunflower called * Teddy Bear (pictured above), which is very compact and has wonderfully soft, fluffy flower heads which are low enough for children to touch. The best garden tools for growing sunflowers in pots

The petals are a bright reddish-orange that will put you in a fiesta mood! 10. Sunbright Supreme SunflowersMost varieties of sunflower bloom for a period of 8-12 weeks. This makes them a great plant choice for adding colour and impact to your garden throughout the summer months and early autumn. There are also some lovely white varieties of sunflowers with chocolate brown centres – try * Italian White, Moonlight or Moonwalker. Reaching a height of around 1.5m and producing flowers of average size and which has a corresponding average blooming season, ‘Velvet Queen’ is actually a very special cultivar. Plant this dwarf sunflower if you want to attract pollinators to your garden or cut the pretty flowers to put in vases. Your Dwarf Sunflower Growing and Care Guide If you love having flowers in your home, the Sunbright Supreme sunflower is a winner. It is revered for its long vase life, so simply cut these flowers, put them in vases, and color-fy your house.

You don’t need to worry about fertilizing your dwarf sunflowers too much or too often. Feed the dwarf sunflowers a balanced, slow-release, all-purpose fertilizer once during the growing season. Dwarf Sunflower Pruning Requirements Suntastic dwarf sunflowers are easy to grow in pots, window boxes, and planters. This cultivar is an All-America Selections winner and a branching sunflower with up to 20 flowerheads on multiple stems per plant. Now, this is a cool name for a mini sunflower. Dwarf Incredible sunflowers have shorter stems (15-20 inches) than other dwarf sunflower varieties, but their flowerheads grow up to 10 inches in width. Sow a few seeds in your garden in late June and in most years, you will have blooms until the first frosts.The Starburst Greenburst sunflower is one of the only dwarf sunflowers with a light lime green center disc. The 4-6 inch semi-double flowers are golden yellow. About 90cm tall, ‘Garden Statement’ is a relatively new cultivar that is rapidly gaining popularity. You can expect standard sunflower varieties to grow 6-10 feet tall, while giant sunflowers (often called mammoth sunflowers) can reach up to 20 feet tall. Dwarf varieties will be much smaller at around 2-3 feet tall. As I mentioned earlier, you can transfer your young plants to bigger pots as they grow. Here’s how to do it:

Growing sunflowers from seeds is just one of the fun nature projects in my new book, * A Year of Nature Craft and Play. If you’ve got your sunflower seedlings on a windowsill, you may need to turn the pots around every now and then, to stop the seedlings leaning towards the light. How much water do sunflowers need?The tiny 4-inch-wide gold flowers are adorable, and best of all, they attract butterflies. (I’m sure you can guess by now that I’ve planted a ton of these in pots and placed them in and around my house.) 3. Yellow Pygmy Sunflowers With all these awe-inspiring dwarf sunflower varieties and a comprehensive care guide, you can finally grow your pot of gold and sunshine. If you’d like some more inspiration for fun things to do in the garden with the kids, you might like to take a look at these other posts. The roots of the mini sunflower are generally shorter than their large relatives, so they don’t grow very deep into the soil. The Little Leo has multiple stems that end in yellow sunflowers that look like daisies. As the name suggests, the Little Leo sunflower is dainty with the 5-inch wide blooms. 34. Starburst Aura Sunflowers

Reaching a staggering height of about 4.5m, which is taller than some trees, the aptly-named ‘Giraffe’ is a giant sunflower. Don’t overwater the sunflowers as this leads to various diseases and root rot. Dwarf sunflowers are relatively drought-tolerant, so water the plants well about once a week. These plants flower from June to September and are most at home in full sunlight. Growing to their full potential. Perfect for adding a touch of natural beauty to your garden in the summer. Specifications At 4m high, ‘Kong’ is not quite as tall as the fabled giant gorilla, but it is very much a giant among its kith and kin.Mr Fothergill’s flower and vegetable seeds are perfect for adding a splash of colour and natural beauty to your garden or outside space. Planting sunflowers in the garden is also brilliant for local wildlife; the flowers are great for bees and other beneficial insects, and birds love to eat the seeds. Can you grow sunflowers in a pot? We planted these seeds in mid-April, and kept the pots indoors for the first couple of weeks. Here’s how our sunflowers looked about four weeks after planting: