If you’re looking for a way to attract more bees to your garden, plant a patch of Lemon Queen sunflowers and join The Great Sunflower Project.

In May I planted a packet of Lemon Queen sunflower seeds so I could be one of the citizen scientists counting bees for the The Great Sunflower Project. The project is the brainchild of Grechen LeBuhn, a professor in the Department of Biology at San Francisco State University.

The project encourages gardeners to plant sunflowers and collect data that will help gauge the health of urban bee populations.

I’m one of about 50,000 gardeners who have signed up to plant and count. So far I’ve submitted the results of three observations.

I don’t know how many bees gardeners are counting in other areas, but I have to say, the bees are loving my Lemon Queens.

During each of my observations honeybees have landed on these sunflowers at nearly one landing per minute during each 15-minute observation.

One of the toughest roses I’ve found that does consistently well in my Zone 5 backyard has turned into something we affectionately call The Rose Monster.

Something most people don’t know about me is that I grew up with a mom who had too many things going on inside the house to be worried about the landscape outside the house.

She didn’t plant flowers. We didn’t have a vegetable garden. There were no colorful containers overflowing with petunias. As long as the lawn got watered and mowed on a fairly regular basis, she was happy with her gardening efforts.

So it’s no surprise I was captivated by the one flowering plant in our yard—a beautiful climbing red rose. Every year that rose grew on its own. It wasn’t lovingly pruned and it certainly wasn’t babied with any special soils or rose fertilizers. It wasn’t protected from freezing temperatures with thick layers of mulch and there was no winter watering.