Tower of sunflowers becomes a shady haven

I've recently run across this idea someplace else, I can't recall where at the moment:

It won't take long to cultivate a love of gardening in your kids with this planting project: a shady playhouse of towering sunflowers. The cheery getaway is the brainchild of Hans Leo, the educational assistant at Bramble Hill Farm in Amherst, Mass., where local schoolkids get to pitch in with the planting, weeding and watering.

Leo came up with the idea after reading about how Indians in Canada created temporary lodges out of live saplings by tying together the upper branches to form a roof.

That sounds like an awful lot of fun to me. Getting young kids to stay away from the tender sunflowers when they are young might be challenging, though.

Also, the thought of trying this project in the fog-drenched, snail-infested Sunset district of San Francisco sounds like an exercise in frustration. Time to move to Marin, I guess.

Link: Tower of sunflowers becomes a shady haven.