It’s not as morbid as you think…

Deadheading. It sounds more like a Halloween post than a gardening one but this is one of the most common tasks that a landscape gardener will undertake during the growing season. It is meditative, fun, and really forces you to get to know how your plants grow!

So what is a deadhead? Essentially it is a dead flowerhead. Deadheading is the process of removing spent flowers. This is done for a few reasons:

• it tidies up the plant

• it can prevent a plant from seeding in the garden (if seeding is undesirable)

• it conserves the plant’s energy; setting seed uses valuable energy that could otherwise be put toward

  • maintaining nice foliage

  • producing more blooms (so the bloom period is extended)

  • sending out a second flush of blooms later in the season if the plant is a rebloomer- not all plants are!

Deadheads, deadheads everywhere… snip them off without a care! Cheesy? I think so. Sorry.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I will feature different types of deadheading. I will also try to include some videos to help illustrate the techniques.

So get ready to have some fun with the secateurs, and start thinking like the queen of hearts… just be sure to use your ‘inner voice’ if you feel like shrieking ‘off with their heads!’