If you’ve received plants for the bee watchers program, please plant them as soon as possible. The best place is in a garden setting that gets full sun for a good portion of the day. If you don’t have a small garden area, then you can grow them in containers. There isn't an absolute rule about container size for planting these plants. Having said that in general, the bigger the better. The bigger the container, the less frequently you will need to water. These are all tough plants and don't need a lot of water once they've put some roots down, but like all of your garden plants, there is a limit to what they will take, especially if you want them to flower and be healthy. They can be planted together in a large container such as a whiskey barrel, or group several in a smaller pot if that's all you have. They don't need to be each planted separately, although they can be. Wherever you plant them, they should be easily viewable by you, so you can clearly see the bees as they visit- so don’t plant them in the back of your garden.

Whatever you plant them in, there should be some room to grow. Except for the Great Sunflower Project sunflower, which is annual, the rest of these plants are perennial and spread by rhizomes, which means in coming years there will be multiple stems of each and there will be competition. The woodland sunflower, Helianthus decapetalus, is the most aggressive of the lot; you may want to plant it in its own container if you can. The annual sunflower, Helianthus annuus, as its name implies, is an annual. If it produces seed you can try holding on to it for next year; you may also find next year that some of the seed has made its way into other parts of your garden. Its easily weeded out if it’s sprouted where you don't want it.

We are gathering data on the nine plant species shown below. (CLICK for a larger image.)