Sunflower Season at Hemingway Hill: A Behind-the-Scenes Look

Whether you’re looking for a memorable sunflower field experience, a sunflower u-pick, a fun farm to visit with your kids, or the perfect place to take pictures, you’ll find it just outside Dallas at Hemingway Hill this June and July.

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I love sunflowers, don’t you? Their cheerful blooms signal the arrival of summer in Texas. There’s nothing quite like gazing at a sunflower field during a sunset, watching their yellow rays flow in perfect unison as a soft breeze touches your skin in the cooler air of a quiet night.

When you visit our farm for a u-pick or your perfect photo-op in the fields, we invite you to slow down and look closer. You might be surprised to learn that these flowers are far more than just pretty faces!

Here’s a peek behind the scenes of how — and why — we create our incredible sunflower experience for you each summer. Yes, it is stunning to see, and an absolute delight to share with your loved ones. And bonus: it’s also one of the most impactful ways we’re bringing life and health to our farm.

Picture-perfect sunflower fields (bring your camera!)

If you’ve ever wondered, “Where can I go to take pictures in a sunflower field?” sunflower season at Hemingway Hill is designed for exactly that kind of experience.

By late June, our fields are filled with thousands of blooms, creating beautiful backdrops for family photos, couples, friend groups, and sunset photography. Golden hour in the fields is especially breathtaking, with rows of sunflowers glowing in the evening light.

Whether you’re capturing memories with your kids or planning a creative photo session, the fields offer countless opportunities to slow down and enjoy the beauty of summer in Terrell.

We grow over 12 varieties of sunflowers at Hemingway Hill, and each one has a specific job to do.

In our large fields and along our fence lines, two varieties do the heavy lifting: a large-seeded hybrid with a light-colored center, and a “black oil” sunflower with a dark center. The large seeds of the hybrid make it easier for the crop to get established during the varying conditions of spring.

Both of our field sunflowers produce pollen, making them favorites for our bees! I have 12 active honeybee hives on the farm, and the fields will literally hum with life as soon as the flowers open. Plenty of native bees, butterflies, and other pollinators visit too.

And just as life is buzzing among the flowers, it’s busy underground as well: sunflower roots do wonders for our soil health. Their deep roots help break up compacted clay, bringing nitrogen and other nutrients up to the surface while they reach down and create channels for air and water. Rather than tilling at the end of the season, we simply mow the tops of the plants, letting the roots decompose in place and leave these channels behind. And we always leave un-mowed sections here and there to create seeds for the birds and other animals through the fall and winter.

When you see our fields full of sunflowers, now you know they are part of a much bigger picture. These incredible plants help us work with nature to bring life and fertility to the farm, no chemicals needed!

I start succession-planting these field seeds the last week in April, sowing a new batch every 3 weeks so they keep blooming until August. Each year I plant over 400 pounds of seed.

By late June, the fields should be ready for you to see. Bring your camera!

U-pick and bouquet sunflowers

For some folks, the magic of the farm is in gathering a bouquet to take home. Kids love it, and something about getting your hands on the flowers makes grownups feel like kids again too!

The sunflowers we grow for bouquets have a different job than our field sunflowers, and we make sure they do it well! Bouquet sunflowers come in many beautiful colors, including red, peach and even chocolate-brown. They’re also bred to be pollen-less, so you don’t end up with bright yellow dust all over your dining table! We look for varieties with sturdy stems, strong necks, and good vase-life so they will look as beautiful as possible for as long as possible after harvest.

At Hemingway Hill, I grow 10 varieties of bouquet sunflowers, each selected to bring variety and unique beauty to your arrangement. They’re planted on a succession schedule, so each week brings something new! Whether you prefer a classic dark-centered bloom with yellow petals (like our best-selling “Procut Bravo”) or something more unusual (like my personal favorite, “Marley”) you’ll find lots to love. The varieties we offer change through the season. You can check out this year’s bloom lineup right here.

Take the joy home with you (and plant it!)

“Marley” sunflowers hold a special place in my heart, because they were the first flower I had success with — really, how all sunflowers began for me. I had just put a row of compost down and thought to myself “surely something will grow in here.” I tossed in some seeds and they just came shooting up! The blooms are so dainty and elegant, and with the color variation in the petals, no two are exactly alike. That was it for me … I had experienced the magic of growing flowers, and there was no going back.

You can have this experience too! We stock seed packets in our shop, filled with a mix of our very favorite varieties. We’re very choosy about where we source our seeds, seeking to ensure that they’re fresh as possible, and ready to germinate.

To plant sunflowers at home, you don’t have to have a lot of equipment. Really, all you need is some dirt and a sunny location. From there you can get fancy with compost, a string to help you plant in straight lines, or even starting seeds early in a seed tray. But it can be as simple as what I did that first time … tossing out the seeds and waiting to see what happens. As long as they get gentle water and soil temps of around 70 degrees, they’ll usually grow! With our volatile spring temps in North Texas, I recommend waiting until late April … after that, you can start seeds any time until August, for blooms in October.

Sunflowers are especially fun to grow with kids! The seeds are large and easy for small hands to handle, and with just 60 days from seed to flower, they’re quick to reward your effort. The plants grow to fill the space they are allotted, so if you give them room you can end up with some giants … and what’s more magical to a kid than a truly massive flower?

Sunflowers help you slow down and reconnect

Many families visit Hemingway Hill each summer looking for fun things to do with their family outdoors. Kids love wandering the sunflower rows, spotting bees and butterflies, and choosing their own blooms to bring home. It’s simple, but in this screen-saturated world, it’s extra special because it is real. I absolutely love watching our visitors reconnect and make memories together.

If you’ve been around here awhile, you know I am an executive during the week. It’s really only on Fridays (sometimes Thursdays now) that I turn into a farmer. I often end my days with a stroll into the flower fields. I’m tempted to bring my phone to identify bird calls, but lately I make myself leave all devices at home and just fully immerse in peace and calm.

While I write this in spring, the sunflowers are just a few inches tall. As the sun droops down under the horizon, I’ll stand there and watch. The only sounds you can hear out in the field are the Mockingbirds and the Chuck-will’s-widow, chirping intently and with vigor.

If you stay focused, you’ll catch something remarkable. In a blink of an eye, all the sunflowers will turn their little heads towards the direction of the sun like flower soldiers. It’s eery. It’s like fields are alive. No one is out there telling them what to do. Just their creator. And every single one makes the official turn to the sun. A perfect picture of unity. Ahh, if the world was only like this!

It’s moments like this that inspire me to share this beautiful farm with you.

Moments of stillness. Moments of beauty. We need those moments.

When you take time to slow down, you see things that you didn’t see before. Such beautiful things that you might otherwise miss. It’s very life-giving. We all need time to make sure that we reconnect, and one of the easiest ways is to be out in nature, with the calmness that nature brings. Rhythms of nature are so true, and they bring a different cadence. They will teach you how to be more peaceful.

There are a lot of problems in this crazy world, and it takes a lot of heart and grit to keep trying to solve them. I know for me personally, a stroll through the fields brings me back to myself, and helps me re-center. Flowers don’t solve everything, but they’ll lift your heart so you can keep trying!

We’re so excited to share this sunflower season with you. Whether you come for a u-pick or a stroll through the fields, and whether you bring home flowers or seeds, we hope you leave with a lighter heart and a fuller spirit, and a pocketful of beautiful memories. Bring your kids, your parents, your best friends, your loved ones, and enjoy!!

— Jennifer