You can maximize the number and quality of blooms in your flower garden by simply doing a bit of care to certain plants and leaving others alone. This article brings to light the benefits of deadheading, pruning, and leaving plants to “do their thing.” Importantly, it shows the types and varieties of flowers are good to deadhead and which ones to simply leave alone.

Sometime perennial plants and bulbs can have different outcomes if you deadhead them or not. This article also helps illuminate what to expect and which option to choose depending on the goals for your landscape garden design.

What is Deadheading? Why does it Produce More Flowers? What Other Benefits Does it Have?

“Deadheading” is the simple act of pinching or cutting off a flower after it has finished its vibrant bloom. This is normally done to encourage the plant to generate more flowers. There is more to it, but it is a simple task that may bring even more beauty to your flower garden.

Not all flowers benefit from deadheading. In fact, there are many plants you’d want to avoid deadheading. So this article cuts through and highlights which plants to deadhead and which not to, and why.

How to Deadhead

You can use pruning shears for virtually any plant to deadhead it. So when in doubt, go ahead and get the pruning shears out. It may just save you from getting a rose thorn into the side of your hand.

That said, some plants respond better to pinching buds or snapping stems at the branch. Geraniums are a good example. These plants have natural break-off points at stem parts. When you snap off the flower stem, it knows to grow more.

Frankly, you don’t always have shears with you either. And deadheading is great to do just as flowers fade. So simply pinching off the flower or breaking off the floral stem may be a much more practical way to deadhead, so you can do it little by little as blooms fade.

Why Deadheading Gives You More Blooms

Deadheading flowers helps to maximize the flowers. In reblooming plants, they stop flowers from going to seed and form new flowers to try again. In many plants, like roses or geraniums, this reflowering can happen all season long providing a bounty of gorgeous blooms.

Benefits of Deadheading, Even on Flowers that Don’t Rebloom

For flowers that only bloom once in a season, there still may be a benefit to deadhead them.

For perennials, that come back year after year, making sure the plant, root, bulb or rhyosome is as healthy as possible is key to having beautiful flower displays in the following year. So for some perennials, the benefit of cutting off blooms before they go to seed is that the energy is redirected in plant growth or to the bulb / root / rhysosome to be used later.

Maximizing the energy into a bulb can be especially important for bulbs that expend a lot of energy into their flower display, such as a Hyacinth. With less energy going back into the bulb, the flower will dwindle year after year.

It may be less impactful on a giant lilac bush to cut off its blooms, but it still will have an impact. Seedmaking is energy intensive, so cutting back even non-reblooming lilacs and camellias can benefit the plant for next year.

Which Flowers to Deadhead or Prune Back

So which flowers benefit from deadheading? The first group are those that will rebloom over and over.

Since annuals are only going to flower for you for one year, maximizing their blooms is normally the goal. Thus, unless the annual is a “self-cleaning”, meaning it will deadhead itself, then deadhead them for speediest and most abundant blooms.

You will get the most out of your marigolds, daisies, bee balm, African violets, sweetness and many others by deadheading as flowers fade. There are self-cleaning annuals like begonias or other hybrids, so just watch for this on any plant information so you know you need not deadhead.

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Perhaps more complex are perennials. Perennials come back year after year, so both overall plant health and also glorious blooms are important. So knowing if you have reblooming flowers or not, will be key.

Flowers like roses, golden rod, daisies, delphiniums, geraniums, lavender, and mums / chrysanthemums, amongst many others, will rebloom from deadheading. For all of these plants, you will benefit from deadheading them.

Perennial bulbs and rhyosomes like daffodils, tulips, hyacinth, amaryllis, iris, rhododendrons will bloom one time in a glorious burst of color. In the normal lifecycle, they would seed or generate additional bulbs/rhysomes, which takes a lot of energy. You can choose to cut off the bloom, thus allowing more energy to go into the health of the bulb / rhyosome. This can give you bigger more impactful flowers next year.

Of course for any of these plants, if you want the seeds, let them generate them. For example, I like my Spanish Bluebells to go to seed, as they naturalize and spread well both by the seeds and the reproducing bulbs.

Be Careful About Pruning Timing for Hydrangea and Pieris

Be warned about the perils of cutting flowers off hydrangeas and pieris. I highlight these two plants in particular, because they are popular and also there is risk of you actually losing blooms if you don’t get the timing right when you cut flowers.

Pieris and some types of Hydrangea (not all types) form their growth buds for the following year right behind the flowers. Normally these form as the flower is deteriorating and going to seed or drying out.

The risk is that if you deadhead these, you could actually be cutting off the growth buds and full flowers for the following year. The risk for pieris doesn’t offset any benefit, so I recommend against deadheading the pieris.

Since there are many types of hydrangeas, it is important that you know which variety you have. There are ones you can easily cut flowers. There are ones that like an Autumn prune and others the like a Spring one; and if you get it mixed up than you lose all the flowers for that year. So I won’t go into all the particularities of Hydrangeas here, as it is better handled in a separate Hydrangea article.

No Need to Deadhead These Flowers

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Many flowers that are close to their wild nature don’t benefit much from deadheading. A lot of woodland flowers come from rhyosomes. So similar to bulbs, they will come back year after year from that underground energy storage and root system. And most don’t bloom more than once, so there is very little benefit to deadheading or pruning. Just leave them to do their thing. Plants like bleeding hearts, mountain laurels, Russian sage, astilbes or Siberian irises are best to just leave alone.

Peonies are part of this type of plant group. So even though the blooms look similar to roses, they are far from them in this respect. Do not deadhead peonies.

Desert plants similarly take care of themselves very well. Cactus, Agave and most seriously drought resistant plants drop their flowers themselves and don’t rebloom or benefit from deadheading.

Most “wild-ish” or weed-derived plants also are best left to their own. These include herbs like verbena, weed-derived plants like Joe Pye Weed or wild violets, and flowers such as California poppies and forget me nots.

Domesticated plants have some “self-cleaning” plants. These are flowers that deadhead themselves. So do not deadhead begonias, they will do it themselves. These days there are also many easily available varieties of petunias, phyloxes, salvias and zinnias that self-clean, so no need to do the deadheading yourself.

Deciding on Pruning Approach Based on Your Garden Design Goals

You are the master landscape garden designer for your space, so only you know really what you want from a piece of land. You may want to let plants spread and expand across a space. Perhaps large feature blooms are desired. Maybe non-stop flowers is what you are after. Or are you building a great habitat for birds or wild ecosystem?

Each of these goals may have you choose a different path, even with the same plants that could be deadheaded.

Showcase, formal or small gardens versus informal or color-blocked spaces

I take two different strategies with my daffodils and tulips, depending on the area of the garden. The containers and beds at the front of the house look best with large impactful flowers followed by a neat and tidy appearance, while other plants in the same pot or bed bloom. And the slope covered in daffodils and cottage tulip garden look best with abundant plants en masse.

So for my containers and bedding tulips and daffodils, I cut the flower stalk back after they bloom. I don’t want the seeds. I want the energy that the leaves collect to go back into the bulb to bring another big flower next year. I also appreciate that the plant looks cleaner and does not distract from other blooming plants.

For the fields of tulips and daffodils, I let them go to seed. If those seeds produce more plants, that is a real win! Also, the flowers are planted en masse, so the individual size of the flower is less of a concern. There I “let them go wild!”

Consider the role your plants play in that part of the garden to choose if you want to leave them to go through their entire lifecycle or instead to deadhead or prune back the flowers.

Leave flowers in place for plants that produce berries, nuts or seeds that are ornamental or beneficial to feeding birds, wildlife or ourselves

It is perhaps obvious that if you are growing strawberries, oranges or tomatoes that you do not deadhead them. The flowers are the early step that will become the berry or fruit that you desire.

There are many other plants that produce berries, nuts or seeds that have benefits other than for our own salads or fruit bowls.

Fruit, nuts and seeds can provide food for your local birds, animals and beneficial insects. In fact, without the full lifecycle of the milkweed, Monarch butterflies would become extinct. So it is not only in wildlife filled areas that it can benefit your local ecosystem by letting your plants achieve their full lifecycle.

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There are also many plants that will give your highly ornamental berries, seed pods, cones or nuts. Imagine Christmas without decorative holly, for example.

So consider the type of plant, and with those with beneficial fruit, berries, nuts or seeds – let them do their full life cycle on their timeline. No deadheading needed.

Learn when to deadhead a naturalizing perennial bulb or plant and when or why to let it go to seed. Consider your plant and garden design landscape goals.

To Deadhead or NOT to Deadhead Video Tutorial – principles, flower varieties & how to deadhead demo

Tutorial video provides a narrative about which types of plants to deadhead, to prune or to leave to go to seed. It talks through the benefits to your landscape garden design in either deadheading for more blooms or leaving to seed for more abundant plants.

Also, test your knowledge with a “To Deadhead or NOT To Deadhead” Quiz.

What’s Next?

Consider other ways to sustainably and smartly design your flower garden to have non-stop displays. Timing of plant displays, color theory and design principles can all play a part in elevating your landscape garden design. Check out this article for expert design tips.

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