If you’re looking for an easy afternoon drive with a real payoff, head to Mizzou’s South Farm on the south side of Columbia. The university’s sunflower field is blooming again this year, and it’s free and open to the public seven days a week, sunup to sundown, through the end of September, according to Mizzou’s own news office.
The field sits at 3600 E. New Haven Road, part of the university’s Central Missouri Research, Extension and Education Center — close enough to Rocheport for a half-hour drive, and easy to pair with a trip into Columbia. The flowers come up in three separate waves this year: one in mid-August, another in early September, and a third in late September, so there’s more than one chance to catch them at their peak. Each planting stays photogenic for roughly a week to ten days after it opens, and the university sticks with a traditional black-and-gold variety, according to KBIA.
The person behind it is Tim Reinbott, who’s spent nearly 40 years as field director for MU Extension and the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources. This year’s display means a little more than most — Reinbott is retiring, and the sunflowers are something of a capstone on a career spent shaping agricultural research at Mizzou. “The sunflowers are our gift to the community,” he told Mizzou’s news office. “They have really brought people together… There hasn’t been a year that’s gone by that I haven’t enjoyed seeing the joy the sunflowers bring to visitors.”
South Farm isn’t just a photo backdrop — it’s a working research and extension farm, and the sunflowers share the property with the rest of what MU Extension does there year-round. If you want a reason to make a fuller day of it, the university’s CAFNR Showcase runs 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, September 26, at South Farm, right at the tail end of the sunflowers’ bloom window.
It’s a simple thing, but a genuine one: a free field of sunflowers, planted on purpose so people have somewhere to go.
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