If the 50 Foot Woman had a Garden...

It might look something like this:

I visited my friend Maureen over the weekend and took this photo of volunteer sunflowers next to her patio - with thanks to her husband Jean Michel for stepping in to provide some scale. 

Maureen believes a recent rash of disappearing plants is due to gophers.

Me? I think these 15' sunflowers are fueling their mutant growth by eating the rest of the garden.

Comments

[Plantanista]

Ha! now all I need is one of those nifty fifty-foot gardening bikinis, and I'm all set!

My DH looks so wistful and expectant, as if he is about to be beamed up to sunflower land!

The lovely thing about those sunflowers is that they planted themselves, have required no staking and little water, have withstood the gopher onslaught, and the flowers last in the house for at least ten days.

My advice- if you find little volunteer sunnies in your garden, invite them to stay!

Thanks for letting my feature some silliness from your garden! And thanks to Jean-Michel for being such a good sport. All I had to do was bellow "Hey! Go stand in the sunflowers!" and no questions asked, it was done.

[Helen at Toronto Gardens]

That's fifty feet of funny.

Thanks, Helen! Sometimes short and sweet is all that's required!

[Alice]

I like the subtitle: Does this come in anything besides green.....Woot!!! Gardenchick, u b one sharp cookie:D
Alice aka BayAreaTendrils

Glad you like it!

[Laura Livengood Schaub (InterLeafer)]

I love happy accidents, and believe that many plants only reach their true potential when they are allowed to choose their own place to grow (wow, kind of like people!)

Hey Laura! I think Maureen would agree with you. Garden crashers are particularly welcome when the rest of the garden is just starting out.

[Town Mouse]

Now if only one could train the sunflowers to pick some cars off the road every once in a while. It would be much more peaceful...

Townie, trust you to take the environmental spin one step farther! Unfortunately, your idea would probably require a good dose of genetic modification. :P

[Rob(ourfrenchgarden)]

I like that poster image. I love all that mid-century modern stuff.

Any taller and those Sunflowers will have snow on top.

No kidding! Maureen had a lovely vase of sunflowers inside - I'm still trying to figure out how she harvested them. With a step ladder? Or did Jean-Michel just shimmy up the stalk?

[Susan aka Miss R.]

Wow--retro movies, handsome Frenchmen, garden divas, monster plants and moles--all in one blogpost! Yowza!

Susan, once again I've drifted over to the silly side. I'll have to follow with a series of super serious posts to regain my design credibility!

[wayne stratz]

I always enjoy telling the students to move the monsters when it is time to throw them into the compost heap... sunflowers that is.

Wayne, given your student's penchant for all things flavored with lavender, I was hoping this post would inspire you to start experimenting with some super-sized lavender with your class!

[VW]

Very funny, Susan! My son keeps begging for sunflowers, but I haven't given in yet since I don't have a good spot for them. Maybe I should get some of these taller ones to help our house look more set into the landscape while our trees are still small. A hort professor used to say that houses without trees look like rockets ready to blast off. Maybe the giant sunflowers would help my home look nestled in?

Well the sunflowers would certainly grow much faster than a tree! I like your hort professor's take and may quote him to clients - one of my pet tree peeves is when clients with golf course views refuse to have any trees. What is so exciting about a flat, hot backyard that looks out on a giant lawn with flags?"

[DaffodilPlanter]

It's great to see volunteers take off like that. "Set your landscape plans aside; we're here and we're going for it!"

At least these volunteers were courteous and chose a relatively unlandscaped corner. Usually volunteers seem to come up about 1/4 inch away from something recently planted!

[Roxy]

Perhaps I should suggest sunflowers when my clients want a fast growing screen and beg for redwood trees in their 10 ft. setback.

Ah yes, the dreaded "why don't clients believe me when I tell them them redwoods don't belong in small, suburban back yards?" I think your sunflower strategy is excellent!

[the inadvertent farmer]

Guard the pets and small children...those suckers are BIG!!! Kim
Kim, you crack me up!

[wayne stratz]

hmmmm, you got me thinking. I'll just take that lavender idea into the gene splicing lab ;')
If you're going to start teaching genetics in addition to horticulture, you should definitely ask for a raise.

[Genevieve]

Oh my dear lord, low-flying planes look out!
No kidding. I talked to Maureen the other day and they're even taller now. Good thing there's no HOA, or they might have a setback issue!

[VW]

Susan - re your question on my blog (since I rarely get back to look at responses to my comments): I do order a lot by mail because I love looking at a catalog with a full line of english roses, iris, hostas, daylilies, etc. and trying to find just the perfect ones for my garden. I often make mistakes when buying plants from the nursery without researching and thinking about them for a while, but if I delay, the nursery might sell out of the ones I want. I like poring over catalogs, researching interesting plants on the internet, waiting for a few weeks or months to make sure it really sounds like a good idea, then ordering. This year I have discovered that the nursery near my house (Gibson's) can order many of the perennials that catch my eye in catalogs - and then I get a larger plant for a lower price and don't pay shipping. So I've been doing a lot of that lately.

[wayne stratz]

I also teach a variety of biology classes and occasionally something like physics or geology.. and I actually did get a raise when I agreed to get certified to teach them

So are you just running a horticulture program right now, or is there also a little moonlighting as an evil scientist going on?

[wayne stratz]

no, only monlight as a stained glass artis and part time theologist. However, I am teaching an Engish class this summer on top of the horticulture.