Sunflowers

The bears love sunflowers. Every year they each sow a seed into a small plant pot filled with compost in the greenhouse. They carefully write their name on a plant label and place it in the pot next to their seed. They are each then responsible for "their" plant - they water it and feed it, and plant it out into the garden (with its label!), and then continue to water and feed it regularly until it grows into a lovely plant with beautiful flowers.

Usually ALL of their seeds grow up and get planted out, but if for some reason, one doesn't make it, the other bears will offer to share their plants with each other. The challenge used to be to grow the tallest sunflower, as that was very easy to judge. But this year, the bears decided not to do that and instead, chose to plant a particular sunflower variety for three reasons:

1. The sunflower variety was called, most appropriately, "Teddy Bear"!

2. The sunflowers wouldn't grow too tall, which meant that the bears could see the flowers better rather than have to get out stepladders to climb up and see them

3. This sunflower grows lots of flowers on each plant, rather than just one, so there would be many more to look at

The "Teddy Bear" sunflowers grow into plants with huge (to a bear) flowers whose petals grow very closely together and look like teddy bear fur.

See the close-up pictures here to see if you agree. The bears take lots of pictures of the plants they grow, and Tommy was very surprised when the flowers on his plant turned out to be even bigger than him! Because the petals on the flowers are so close together they make a very solid flower, which is lucky because James went round patting them all because he couldn't believe they were real! It was the first time he had grown sunflowers!

The bears are always very excited when the first flowers start to form in July and, by August, their plants are covered with bright yellow discs.

They think it is great that their plants grow from little tiny seeds into the biggest flowers they could imagine. It takes a lot of work to look after each plant but the rewards are so worth it!

Another great thing about growing sunflowers is that, at the end of the season, when all the flowers have gone, the seed-heads, which are full of lovely sunflower seeds, remain for the birds to eat throughout the winter. So a special feast for them is a wonderful extra!

It's too late to grow sunflowers this year, but you could choose a sunflower to grow next year to see if yours are as lovely as those the bears grew.

There are many different varieties of sunflowers - some grow very tall, some have orange flowers rather than yellow, some have just a huge single flower, some have lots of little flowers all over them. Decide which type you would like to grow and buy a packet of seeds, then wait until next Spring and sow them just like the bears did. Look after them carefully and let the bears know how you get on!