Sunflower festival keeps growing

MANY people would have noticed the splendid display of sunflowers of Jan Juc residents Vera and Steve in past summers along the Surf Coast Highway.

For the eighth year in a row, their sunflowers are popping up again, ready to grow tall over the coming couple of months, and will join plantings coming into bloom for the first time as part of the Surf Coast Sunflower Festival.

Vera and Steve began their yearly tradition of planting sunflowers at Jan Juc when their grandson gave Steve some seeds for Fathers’ Day.

Steve’s father said his mother in Macedonia also used to grow them, and would always bless herself three times after planting, to ensure good growth.

Surf Coast Sunflower Festival organiser Bronwyn McNamee said the grassroots community initiative had made more than 2,000 free packets of sunflower seeds available so Surf Coast residents could plant them at their homes.

“The sunflowers are now, like Vera and Steve’s, just beginning to grow, after a late start to the warm weather.

“Hopefully the Surf Coast will be aglow with cheery sunflowers by mid-summer.”

The festival was inspired by Ms McNamee’s visit last year with her husband Gerry Baldock, to Kensington, where the pair visited the Kensington Sunflower Festival.

Ms McNamee said the festival would culminate in early February with a fun gathering in Torquay where people can come and show off their sunflowers, and possibly even win a quirky little prize for the tallest, smallest, heaviest head, weirdest-looking, cutest, and other random categories of sunflower.

If you have not yet planted any seeds, there is still time, as the plants only take about eights weeks to flower.

Packets of free tall variety seeds can still be picked up at the Torquay Library, Amitie Textiles, Mavis Mavis, Swell, Little Things Big Things or the front of 22 Munday Street.

Local nurseries have packets of seeds for smaller varieties.

Ms NcNamee said she was restocking some of the outlets with new packets of seeds.

“We’ve already got about 2,000 packets, so another 200 or so more can’t hurt.”