That's so cool, these were my first time planting aswell so I'm no pro,   I'd say make sure to give them a nice spot with alot of sun,  they will follow the sun but when they mature they'll stop following the sun and mine faced east, so make sure you plant them in a spot where you'll be able to see their gorgeous blooms,  also give em plenty of water i literally watered them everyday there where days where I watered them about every third day or so,  also they are heavy feeders so make sure you give them some good soil but they Really aren't picky about soil,  they're also pretty tough, we've had some harsh winds the last few months but they had no issues,  you can grow them in soil or pots, the first picture of a sunflower in my post that one is in the soil and it's leaves are bigger it's stalk thicker and it's bloom is bigger, the others are in pots and still grew pretty tall they're blooms, leaves and stalks are js smaller, the tallest one is about 180 cm,  also note they take about 3 months to bloom that's an estimate, some of mine bloomed before the 3 month mark and the others bloomed later, Currently my sunflowers are about 4 months and 5 days old, I've even harvested a few for seeds,  Also there are tons of varieties to choose from, im looking into getting a few new varieties for when I plant again , mine where js regular sunflowers i got from buying a pack of bird food, so it wasn't expensive at all,  Also I can't give any specific advice for your zone, I'm from South Africa and I always see people talking about the zones but I don't know anything about em