Reaching for the sun

Local gardener grows massive sunflowers

Andrew D. Brosig
Posted 8/8/18

LaJoy Anderson didn’t know what she was going to get when she planted a few of one of her favorite flowers in her new garden plot last spring.

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Reaching for the sun

Local gardener grows massive sunflowers

Posted

TORRINGTONLaJoy Anderson didn’t know what she was going to get when she planted a few of one of her favorite flowers in her new garden plot last spring.

It was an untested piece of ground near an alley at the back of her property on Alta Vista Road in Torrington. There had been a shed there, which was taken out, leaving just a concrete pad in its place, Mrs. Anderson said. Then, earlier this year, she decided to have the pad removed.

“I thought, if I took that out, I could have a nice little garden,” Mrs. Anderson said. “I’ve raised flowers all my life. I just love sunflowers.”

And it is a nice garden. But the term “little” may not actually apply, at least to some of her plants.

Towering over the other flowers are two varieties of sunflowers which have grown well beyond expectations.

“I just watered them,” Mrs. Anderson said Monday. “Though with the rain we’ve got this year, I didn’t even have to water them very much. I didn’t do anything else special.”

One common sunflower variety she planted has grown to about 12-feet tall. A second variety - the Little Becka, which sports a two-toned bloom – has topped out at about six feet.

Mrs. Anderson moved to Torrington with her husband, Clark, when they retired from their farm east of Glendo in 2004. Clark Anderson’s father had purchased the farm for him when he returned from military service. Clark and LaJoy Anderson farmed there for more than 60 years.

And they always had flowers, she said. They both loved to garden and, almost till the day he passed in 2014, Clark Anderson still took pride in caring for his lawn and landscape around the home they’d retired to in Torrington.

After Mr. Anderson passed away well into his 80s, Mrs. Anderson sold their home and moved to a smaller residence just around the corner and a couple of blocks away on Alta Vista Road. But she still gardens, partly to honor the memory of her late husband, she said.

“He was a motorcycle guy, a tractor-pull guy and a farmer all his life,” Mrs. Anderson said. “He love flowers, too. And I am 87, but I plan to garden just as long as I can.”