About our story

There are many reasons for setting up a website: to create an online presence, promote awareness of a service or idea, or to share and sell a product. This website does something different. It tells a story - or rather, many stories - that all began with sunflowers.

Sow the Sun is a project that began in grief and grew into something much larger. This site presents images of sunflowers being grown and planted in locations across Cardiff, connecting communities, people, and places. It also offers space to explore the roots of the project - how it began, why it matters, and what continues to grow from it.

As with life itself, some projects emerge from careful planning. An idea or problem is considered, discussed, shaped into a goal, and pursued with intention. But some beginnings are smaller and more spontaneous - a quiet act, not especially well thought through, that triggers a chain of unexpected events.

Sow the Sun began with the planting of a few sunflower seeds. It unfolded organically, as people began to share stories - of loss, memory, love, and resilience. As it grew, it revealed deeper themes, offered moments of reflection, and brought people together in ways no one could have planned.

Stories Are Everywhere

We are surrounded by stories, though we rarely stop to notice them. Stories explain how things came to be, how we became who we are, and where we might be going. We are always storytelling. They give shape to our days - when we wake up, when we’re unwell, when we’re trying to make sense of something unfamiliar. They bring meaning and coherence to the scattered pieces and evolving nature of our lives.

Understanding how something came about is often just as interesting - and just as important - as what came about. This website doesn’t just showcase sunflower plantings. It holds space for the stories that gave rise to Sow the Sun, and the stories that have grown from it. We hope it will invite others to engage with these ideas and perhaps become involved themselves.

Sunflowers at the Centre

As would be expected sunflowers are the central characters. They take centre stage in their simplicity, beauty, and deep association with strength and hope. But in time, and as the process unfolded, it became clear that the activities surrounding them were doing something more. They were creating spaces where life’s deeper themes could be expressed - grief, joy, connection, uncertainty, memory, resilience.

And slowly, other characters emerged: friends, family, neighbours, artists, and strangers - each helping to weave a thread through individual stories into a shared tapestry.

These stories, seemingly incidental to the sunflowers, are reminders of the depth and richness present in all our lives. If only we can be still, take time to notice, look and listen.

Splott Community Volunteers

Dream & Wishes

Kerbside Cafe

Cow and Snuffers

Buddhist Centre

Getting ready for planting

Artist Scott Euden’s painted landscape

A Note on the Artwork

One unexpected feature of the 2024 season was the painting of the Virgin Media boxes outside a Presbyterian church on Cathedral Road, one of Red Rose School’s sites. The artist was Scott Euden, a member of staff and an established local artist.

Before beginning his work, Scott took time to learn about James and the origins of Sow the Sun. Over a series of sessions, a landscape painting emerged. What neither of us realised at the time, as we stood together on the pavement outside the church, was that Scott’s image would become a landmark in Sow the Sun’s journey - a visual expression of its roots.

There was something in his landscape that resonated with life itself - the shifting light, movement, the sense of change.

As the website took shape and swimming with thoughts about how to construct it, the idea emerged to incorporate different views of this painted landscape throughout the site. These images offer a visual continuity, a quiet reminder of the grounding inspiration that runs beneath the surface.

Light and Shadow

Sunflowers are often seen as smiling faces - joyful, sunny, bold. And while many found comfort and delight in planting them after James’s death, that time also held space for reflection, sadness, and sorrow.

It’s natural to want to avoid difficult feelings, to smile through pain. We’re taught to fear despair, to dread the sense of losing touch with the ground, when we no longer have the words or the will to tell our story anymore. We risk falling silent.

And yet, these feelings of every kind, shade, and intensity are what make us human. They are what help us to understand the mysteries of our lives. They are what make us alive.

Cardiff for Ukraine