Repeat flowering plants

Campanula lactifolia with secondary flowers emerging after the main flower head was removed

Some plants will give you more than one set of flowers and this is great for pollinators as well as give you extra colour in the garden.

A few plants do this naturally and I founmd that, this year, more plants than usual seemed to want to behave this way but they did so once rain arrived and after a long period of drought. This seems to be the plants reaction to not sensing that it has successfully produced seed and it needs to have another go.

However most need some encouragement to re-flower either by deadheaded or cutting back I find plants tend to fall into 2 groups; the ones that go very dead-looking and scruffy on top or the ones where only the flowers fade and the rest of the plant stems stay green.

If its the first group (nepetas, malvas, geraniums) cut them right back to just above any green shoots you might find near the ground.

With the second group you need to be a bit more careful as there are usually small buds where the leaves emerge from the stems so you dont want to cut the stems down, just remove the dead flowers down the the next fork in the stem or where the next leaf emerges. This group includes roses (classic for deadheading) and heleniums, dahlias and most annuals.