Sunflowers in Raleigh, NC

July 21, 2019

Yesterday I returned home from a 2-week visit to my brother and SIL in Raleigh. My SIL is an avid gardener involved in the JC Raulston Arboretum. She collects Japanese maples and is in the process of creating a woodland garden on her 1.3 ac property. My brother is not deeply into plants but plans and builds architectural features out of stone for the yard. I have given my SIL a standard Sabal minor that she planted in the woodland garden and a Sabal minor Blountstown Dwarf that she keeps in a pot. When leaving an evening talk at the Arboretum one night I passed a whole row of Sabal minor planted along the street. It was too dark to take photos.

On my final full day there we went that morning to a park where, for the second year, employees had planted acres of sunflowers for public view. The flowers started blooming the week before and consisted of 6-7' tall plants of large dinner-plate yellow sunflowers, shorter plants of multiple smaller yellow flowers and red-orange sunflowers. The day was swelteringly hot, the sky cloudless and sun relentless. We lasted scarcely an hour before we had to leave but I was able to take some photos. Who doesn't love sunflowers? They make any day much brighter.

Sunflower fields on a sunny July day