Keep your garden looking its best with a bit of deadheading. Removing faded flowers can promote repeat bloom on some plants, encourage fuller, more compact growth and tidy up the garden.
Use a bypass pruner or deadheading snips to remove faded flowers. These tools have two sharp blades like scissors. This results in a clean cut that closes quickly, leaving your plant looking its best.
The type of flower will influence how and where to make the cut. In general, remove the stem of faded blooms back to the first set of healthy leaves or nearby flower buds.
Deadhead flowers like salvia, veronica and snapdragons by removing faded flowers to encourage more blooms. Make cuts below the faded flower and above a set of healthy leaves or new flower stems.
Encourage additional blossoms and improve the Shasta daisy's appearance by removing faded flowers. Prune back just above a set of healthy leaves.
Cut the flowers of Armeria, coral bells and other flowers back to the base of the flower stems that arise from the foliage. This improves the appearance and encourages more blooms on some of this type of flowering perennial.
Plants like daylilies and balloon flowers require a bit different care for a tidier look. Remove the individual blooms as they fade. Once bloomed out, you can cut the flower stem back at the base. Allowing the faded flowers to hang on the stem until it is all bloomed out won't hurt the plant, it just detracts from the plant's overall beauty.
Removing fading flowers of fuchsia and lantana will prevent the plants from going to seed and encourage more blooms. Remove any berries that do form to keep these plants flowering.
