by Barb Levisay
The last month has been hard on the flower beds. Intense heat and drought has probably turned your phlox into dry stems and zinnias into brown blobs. Don’t worry, no one’s garden look great right now.
The rain of the last week has come just at the right time. You can still get plenty of beautiful blooms and lush flower beds with a bit of tough love.
Deadhead spent flowers
Deadheading refers to cutting off the blooms of spent flowers as the season progresses. The idea is to help your flowers spend all their energy creating new blooms. Most of your flowers, after pollination, will begin the work of creating seeds, but deadheading keeps them focused on creating new buds. Even sterile flowering plants, like profusion zinnias, benefit from a bloom cut so they focus on new growth.
To deadhead, look for the next leaf node below the spent flower head and cut right above. You’ll often even see a tiny bud coming out from that node, just waiting to start a new flower. If the flower stalk is long and getting droopy, cut it further down, but still right above a leaf node. Use sharp bypass garden clippers to get the cleanest cut possible.
Flowers I have been deadheading this week include echinacea, buddleia, salvia, yarrow, black-eyed- susans, Angelonia, sage, zinnias, verbena, coreopsis, and lilies. I also trimmed the thyme and oregano which was flowering in the herb bed. The august rains will give the plants new life and we’ll have another round of spring-like flowers in September.
Echinacea (purple cone flowers) and buddleia in the summer garden.
Trim out the dead stuff to rejuvenate
Some plants need even more aggressive trimming than just the flower heads. Even though you are likely to leave an empty hole in the garden where you cut back, with some nice rain the greenery will come back quickly. Some of the plants I’m trimming now include:
Phlox that is dried out and drooping. This year the phlox looked really sad, so I cut it down to about 6 inches. It’s not pretty now, but with the rain, it will put on green leaves and maybe even a few flowers.
Maidenhair, Japanese painted and wood ferns that are brown and black. I cut them all the way to the ground, but the rain brings them back quickly, looking fresh and green.
Columbine leaves that are brown and leaf-miner scarred. The lovely green foliage that comes back will look great until frost.
Daylily stalks and dead leaves. The dead leaves come up pretty easily if you just grab and pull (wear gloves). Green shoots will emerge from the plant and provide a new healthy flush of green leaves in September.
Hosta flower stalks and brown leaves. It’s amazing how a little trimming can bring the hosta bed back to looking great.
Summer flowers that hit their prime in July can be rejuvenated with a little tough love in August.
Save some seeds for the birds
As the season progresses, there are flower heads you will want to leave for the birds. The coneflower, tithonia, and rudbeckia flowers you let go to seed will provide food for goldfinches, titmice, and other birds well into the winter. It’s a wonderful sight to see the coneflower heads bobbing in the wind with a goldfinch firmly attached.
Your garden may not look it’s best right now. Mine sure doesn’t. But with a little help, your plants will looked rejuvenated and beautiful going into the fall. If you have a question, send me a note at barb.levisay@gmail.com .