Deadheading is one of those garden tasks that can become rather onerous if you have extensive borders. Snipping off the flowers as they fade can take quite some time, but it will be well worth the effort. If you leave the dead flowers the plant will go to seed, but if the dead heads are removed the plant will be encouraged to produce further blooms. This article by Teo Spengler which I found on the Gardening Know How website lists the top ten flowers that will benefit from deadheading.

If you shudder when you hear the word ?deadheading,? you are not alone. Many gardeners dislike it on first hearing. It sounds too violent to describe anything they would do to their favorite flowering plants. Yet deadheading?or snipping off blossoms as they fade and die?can help extend their bloom period. It?s not advised for every plant, but many species benefit from this pruning.

Why You Should Deadhead

A flower?s first duty is to its species, and it will try mightily to produce seeds. An annual?s entire ?to-do? list runs like this: grow, flower, produce seeds, and die. Once seeding is over, its life work is done. As a gardener, you have another agenda for your plants. You want them to flower longer, making your garden beautiful. Dead flowers can be interesting, but they are generally not gorgeous in the same way roses are. In fact, plants with dead blossoms make a landscape less attractive.

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