GUILFORD COUNTY, N.C. — You may be surprised by this, but for the NCDOT, even planting flowers is part of the job.

“Today, we’re going to be planting hybrid sunflower seeds,” roadside engineer Kevin Clemmer said.

        What You Need To Know

• The NCDOT plants wildflowers around our highways year-round, depending on the type of flower 

• There are 14 NCDOT departments with about 45 beds per department, which is about 630 beds total 

• Kevin Clemmer grew up on a small farm in Guilford County, which spurred him to pursue a career in agriculture

Have you ever wondered how the state's highways end up dotted with beautiful wildflowers?

It's thanks to NCDOT engineers, like Clemmer.

“We’re no-tilling. You see the slits of rows to where the seed is falling in, looks great over here,” he said, pointing at the ground. “But then over here, you see one of the rows, the seed is not going in the ground on this particular row, in this particular spot. But that’s OK.”

His love for the Earth started all the way back when he grew up on a small family farm in Guilford County.

“I see the urge and the need for food, food security. Food availability is a great topic right now,” Clemmer said. “It’s going to take young folks like us with the drive to keep the pollinators available.”

That’s exactly what these flower beds will do. Not only are they beautiful to look at, but they provide extra nourishment for pollinating insects to spread to farms.

“Scientifically, it’s very, very important for the local pollinators in this community to have forage and nectar to support local farmers that are adjacent to our interconnected division of highways, so that we’re supporting their habitat, their forage, their nectar for your food supply,” Clemmer said.

More food for the pollinators means more food for us.

Clemmer is one of 14 roadside engineers throughout the state.

They spread the seeds, highway by highway, the entire year since different flowers bloom with different conditions.

“Off the cusp, I want to say we have about 45 beds in each of our 14 divisions,” Clemmer said. “But at any one point in time, those 45 could be spring-blooming, summer-blooming, fall-blooming.”

A spread of seeds now with the tractor, plus, a round with fertilizer and about three months later, those seeds bloom into wildflowers. The flowers will stick around for some time after they bloom.

The cycle repeats every five years or so because the beds will continue to produce flowers for some time beyond the first bloom, as long as the NCDOT keeps them maintained.

“This bed is a bed of reseeded sunflowers,” Clemmer said, holding a dead sunflower head. “We actually planted this bed this past summer, 2021, and we had a really good crop, a really good bloom. It set seed. That seed has dropped to the ground. Here you see the spent heads and older seed.”

The seeds that show there’s a lot more than just beauty in these flowers.