An eyecatching summer favourite can bloom for months and is also loved by our hungry birds, says Val Bourne

I’m finding this a late season, so I’m only just beginning to sow my annual seeds in trays under glass. It will be another three or four weeks before I start sprinkling seeds such as calendula, ammi, poppy and cornflower, into garden soil.

I’ll water, incant on a regular basis and nurture them. Hopefully, by midsummer, that part of my garden will be alive with colour and insect life, for hardy annuals and biennials have to set seed to survive.

The lure is plenty of nectar and pollen, so there’s more of a buzz on them than anything else.

This year, I’m giving sunflowers another go, prompted by Fleuroselect, who’ve designated 2015 as the Year of the Sunflower. It came as a reminder that sunflowers produce flowers that last for months and, even when they’re over, their seed heads sustain the birds.

Goldfinches love them. All you have to do is pray for a good summer and protect them from slugs when they’re small and vulnerable. The best method is to plant them out from larger pots, so that they are at least a foot tall. This goes for dahlias, too.

Young plants are a gourmet feast for gastropods, more mature ones less so. Most sunflowers originate from the Americas and annual forms flower and then set seed before dying; all in the same year. In warmer parts of Britain, I have seen fields of them and they stand like a regiment of soldiers, turning their heads to track the sun as it moves from east to west.

This process, known as heliotropism, defines the sunflower. It also means they need careful placing, otherwise you may end up looking at the back of the head and not the attractive front. As the flowers mature, though, they slow down and tend to face east.

Perennial sunflowers also chase the sun, including the lovely pallid-yellow Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’, a 5ft-high clumping sunflower I have grown for many a year. This was bred in Twyford in Berkshire, by Tommy Carlile’s Loddon Nursery.

He bedded plants out on the main crossroads at Twyford and Carlile’s Corner was said to stop the traffic. His Loddon prefix graces many first-rate yellow daisies, all of them well-behaved and clump-forming.

Others will rampage, so avoid H rigidus Miss Mellish and ‘Gullickson’s Form’ at all costs: their ankle-like joints will ramble and spread in a year. I learned this, aged 10, having to dig it out.

Annual sunflower varieties include giants that reach 10ft in height (3m), with flowers that can measure 18ins across (45cm). ‘Mongolian Giant’ (Suttons), ‘Giraffe’ (Suttons), ‘American Giant’ (Unwins) or ‘Russian Giant’ (T&M) will scale the heights like triffids.

Multi-stemmed sunflowers include ‘Prado Yellow’ (T &M), ‘Choco Sun’ (Mr Fothergill’s and T &M) and ‘Hallo’ (Mr Fothergill’s).

There are red ones such as ‘Velvet Queen’ (T &M) and dwarf varieties that bear lots of small flowers, such as F1 ‘Suntastic Yellow’ (Suttons).

There are even pale creamy whites, including ‘Moonlight’ (Suttons) and ‘Moonwalker’ (T &M) because plant breeders have delighted in producing a whole range.

Sunflowers make good cut flowers and the plant breeders have bred pollen-free ones for this purpose. However, these are not as insect-friendly and won’t pull in the bees and butterflies nearly as well. Once pollinated, a spiral-pattern develops, but many sunflowers are F1 hybrids and the seedlings will vary and may disappoint when sown.

You can also sow annual rudbeckias, bred from Rudbeckia hirta and my ultimate favourite is ‘Indian Summer’ from Suttons. This wide-eyed, golden yellow daisy, with a neat brown middle, will survive in some winters, proving it’s not really an annual. The one to avoid is ‘Prairie Sun’, as it flowers too late due to our cool summers.

If you want a perennial version that will deliver bright yellow daisies in profusion in August, opt for Rudbeckia fulgida var sullivantii Goldsturm or the slightly neater Rudbeckia fulgida var deamii. These both reach knee height and make good clumps for the front of the border. Beth Chatto sells a good range of rudbeckias and just about anything else. Her mail order is excellent. (bethchatto.co.uk or 01206 822 007).

Golden yellow cheers up the garden (and the gardener), but it can also be used to balance blues and purples, running through the garden like a golden thread.

Whether it’s an annual sunflower or a permanent perennial, it will sing of summer days.

So I shall be planting some sunflowers with my grandchildren this weekend, just as my grandmother did.