Brighten your day with some sunflowers (but don't take the wrong turn in the maze)

Anne McGrath owns Majura Valley Free Range Eggs with her family, but in addition to tending the chooks, they’ve been hard at work planting sunflowers across part of their farmland.

This year, Ms McGrath said “between 5000 and 10,000 flowers” have been planted across a two-hectare area in preparation for the opening of the Majura Valley Sunflower Maze this Saturday (9 March) at 10 am.

As in previous years, attendees will be able to snap Instagram-worthy photographs in the maze, pick their own sunflowers from a field and take them home as souvenirs of their visit.

The rainfall in recent weeks has done more than break up the summer heat, so Ms McGrath and the rest of her team didn’t need to irrigate the sunflowers.

“They’re just about to peak – some of them are still coming out, but most are in full bloom,” she said.

“We’ve been so lucky with the rain, so most of them have grown to be at least one-and-a-half metres tall, if not more,” she said.

The sunflowers will be open to the public from 10 am to sunset from Wednesdays to Sundays.

“We’re hoping the flowers hold on until the Easter long weekend,” she said.

“Once the flowers start to finish off, we’ll open up the whole maze for people to cut flowers.”

A ticketing system has also been introduced for the first time to help manage numbers.

“That is down to the safety side of it,” she said.

“We wanted anyone and everyone to have access, but we need to think about the traffic.

“In the last couple of years, we’ve had people park up the road and it was becoming dangerous.”

While the sunflowers are open to the public for several weeks – meaning there is plenty of time to plan your visit – Ms McGrath said people can book in advance.

“We’ve had people booking their tickets around Easter already!”

Ms McGrath said she hoped the sunflowers remind people of the farming and agriculture industries within the Territory.

“It is a really good chance for people to become aware of these farms that are within a few kilometres of the centre of Canberra,” she said.

“We run it so the people of Canberra can be aware of the farms in their vicinity – they can have a small experience of being out on a property.”

Majura Valley Farm Gate is located at 728 Majura Road, Majura, and is open from 8 am to 7 pm, seven days a week. The sunflower maze will be open from 9 March (Saturday) and people can walk through it from 10 am to sunset on Wednesdays to Sundays. Tickets are available via Humanitix for $5 to $15. Walk-ins will be admitted, subject on ticket availability.

Original Article published by Claire Sams on Riotact.