Sunflowers in the Heartland: Welcoming Farms Where You Can See Sunflowers

Just as the Netherlands is famous for tulips, and Provence is known for fields of lavender, there may be no flower that is more American than the sunflower.

Starting each July and lasting through the summer, these bright, cheerful blooms erupt throughout The Great Plains, rising through the weeds of open fields, and growing along highways, flooding any available dirt with hues of yellow and orange.

Kansas is the heart of sunflower country—it is the official state flower, after all. Actual wild sunflowers have smaller blooms that resemble yellow daisies, but giant sunflowers are a product of genetic hybridization, cultivated thousands of years ago by farmers from indigenous tribes throughout the American southwest (before it was the United States). 

The big-bloomed varieties can occasionally be spotted in the wild, but the best giant sunflower encounters usually happen on farms, where professionals grow hundreds of thousands of flowers that stand 5-–10 feet tall, their blooms all pointed in the same direction. 

Farmers might plant sunflowers one summer but some other crop the next, depending on prices or weather—or if they’re not in the mood to deal with tourists running around on their land, taking selfies. 

Of the several farms in Kansas that grow sunflowers reliably each summer, a few also explicitly welcome visitors to walk around and take some photos. 

The official tourism office in Kansas publishes some locations of sunflower farms, but maybe because tourism isn’t a high priority for the current government in Kansas, its information is woefully inaccurate. So we verified the situation by making a tour of the best places ourselves.

If you want to visit one of these sunflower farms, keep a few things in mind. One: Every farmer plants sunflower seeds at different times, so check their social media accounts (usually Facebook) for updates on the status of the flowers. 

Also, these places really are farms, so your shoes might get muddy, the leaves might scratch your legs if you wear shorts, and yes, there are lots of bugs, including bees. The bees are too busy pollinating the massive blooms to care about you, so leave them alone and you should be fine. 

Grinter Farms

24154 Stillwell Rd., Lawrence, Kansas; www.facebook.com/GrinterFarms

Grinter Farms is the most famous sunflower farm in Kansas, drawing tens of thousands of visitors each summer. Located less than an hour drive west of Kansas City, this 2,000-acre farm mostly produces traditional crops including corn, but Farmer Ted Grinter reserves about 40 acres each summer for the sunflowers, which he spreads across two fields. The west field (pictured above) is especially popular for photos, as it slopes gently upward, perfect for capturing maximum bloomage in photos with the setting sun as the backdrop.

The Grinter family has been planting sunflowers for around 40 years, and they’ve built a sunflower mini-empire on their land, including a gift shop, with the Grinter Farms name emblazoned on  sunflower-themed coffee cups, dish towels, and assorted knickknacks.

Grinter Farms is free to explore, but Farmer Ted asks anyone who breaks off a sunflower to keep to please leave some money in one of the donation boxes that are installed around the flower fields. Donations are also expected from professional photographers who host photo sessions in the flower fields. Those photographers show up in droves every evening to capture sunset portraits of gorgeous families all dressed in matching Pumpkin Spice attire. It can be quite a scene, so if you just want to have fun looking at the sunflowers and take some selfies, go earlier in the day.