How to deadhead for beginners
Find out how to deadhead flowers in your beds, borders, containers and hanging baskets to extend the flowering season in your garden.
Deadheading is the term given to the removal of faded or dead flowers from plants. It might seem like a big job that only professional gardeners know how to do, but deadheading is incredibly easy – even for beginners! If you have a big garden with lots of flowers it can take a bit of time but spending five or ten minutes a day deadheading your plants is all it takes to make good progress. Plus, what else can be more therapeutic than spending time outdoors tending to your plants?
There are many benefits to deadheading flowers, both for the look and functionality of your garden. Keep reading our guide to find out how you can go about deadheading successfully, and what flowers you should have a go at deadheading this summer to keep the colour coming in your garden as we transition into autumn.
Why should I deadhead flowers?
Deadheading your plants can encourage a second bloom of flowers, giving you a more colourful garden for longer – sometimes even until the first frosts!
The idea that snipping off flowers produces more flowers sounds a bit backwards, but the reason deadheading works is because the plant’s energy is focused on forming new flowers rather than producing fruits or seeds.
Other reasons to deadhead your plants include preventing dead flowers from rotting and causing disease or infection, as well as improving the overall appearance of your garden – dead flowers don’t look very nice!
Deadheading your bulbs is useful too, as it diverts the plant’s energy back to the bulb, increasing the chances of it flowering again the following year.
As you can see, there are lots of benefits to deadheading. Now all you need to do is grab a sharp pair of secateurs and get ready to snip!
How to deadhead
Deadheading is an easy gardening task and there aren’t many steps to cover, but here are some of our top tips:
- Using your secateurs, simply snip away dying flowers just above the next bud or leaf on the stem.
- Deadheading is not the same as pruning – cut just below the faded bloom, before the first set of leaves.
- It’s best to deadhead as soon as flowers fade to keep on top of maintenance. Deadhead summer bedding plants daily, and perennials once a week or every other week.
- Clean your secateurs after deadheading – dirty tools can spread disease.
Top tip: Some flowers such as Rudbeckias and heleniums can provide seeds which are eaten by birds, so you might want to leave some of these decayed flowers to support wildlife through the colder months.
What flowers should I deadhead?
Here are some common garden plants you’ll want to deadhead to help them stay healthy and look beautiful:
Hebe – deadhead hebes at the base of the flower. This encourages more blooms and makes shrub look pretty.
Peonies – to channel energy back to the roots and leaves, improve flowering year after year, and reduces the chances of infection, prune your peonies whenever their blooms fade.
Roses – it’s important to deadhead repeat flowering roses to encourage more blooms. Snip the faded flowers back to the main stem. Towards the end of the autumn, you might want to stop deadheading roses so you can produce rosehips, which not only look attractive, but provide food for wildlife.
Dahlias – deadhead dahlias to divert their energy back to their corms so they keep growing year after year. Make sure you don’t accidentally deadhead new dahlia buds – new ones are round while spent blooms are pointed. Remove these pointed ones by deadheading the whole flowering stem.
Agapanthus – the already short flowering season of the agapanthus is made even shorter if you don't deadhead. Cut the faded blooms right back to the base.
Bulbs - deadhead bulbs with large flowers (like daffodils) by cutting the flower stalk just behind the bulbous seed capsule at the top of the stem. Leave the stalk in place to help build up the bulb for next season’s flowering.
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