Sunlight

• Sunflowers need unfiltered access to sunlight, which can be hard for them to get when grown alongside other tall plants. Climbing beans grow on vines at ground level, so they don't block the light that sunflowers need to thrive. Climbing beans, on the other hand, prefer some shade, which the towering sunflowers supply.
  
  

Other Benefits

• Once established in the garden, the stalks of sunflower plants provide trellislike support for the bean vines to climb. This prevents bean vines from getting tangled and beans from getting crushed. Sunflowers also draw bees to the bean plants, which increases pollination of the plants and usually the yield.
  
  

Planting Method

• When planting sunflowers and climbing beans together, the ideal method is to alternate the plants so that each plant has its own nearby companions. Don't surround a single bean plant with sunflowers, because the beans do need some sunlight to grow, and don't surround a single sunflower plant with beans, because the vines from multiple plants may overtake the single sunflower stalk and cause the stalk to break.
  
  

Harvesting

• Since climbing beans and sunflowers sit at vastly different levels in the garden, harvesting must generally be done by hand. The process of harvesting is made easier, however, because the bean vines are up off the ground, making the beans easier to see and to pick. If you want to pick the sunflowers from your garden and bean plants are using the sunflowers as a trellis, consider installing a trellis in place of the sunflower plant to give beans something else to cling to.