Flowers All Summer Long
If you cut your flowers instead of dead-heading them, they’ll flower for twice as long. This will leave you with a beautiful garden space filled with colorful, scented blooms throughout the summer. Here are some of my favorites:
- Crocosmia, pictured below, adds an exotic touch to your favorite home grown arrangements. This Gladiolus relative bears clusters of bold red, orange, or yellow flowers that always seem to be the center of attention.
- Yarrow: It’s beautiful and tough. In fact, this is one of the most maintenance-free perennials you can grow. yarrow resists heat, drought, deer, and rabbits. It’s also a blooming machine, producing flat-topped clusters of yellow, orange, red, pink, or white flowers throughout the summer.
- Bearded Iris: Bearded iris (also called German iris) provides a striking vertical accent with its stiff sword-shaped leaves. Flower colors run the rainbow from deep Burgundy red to pastel pinks and yellows, to every shade of blue and violet and appear in late spring.
- Blazing Star: A North American native, blazing star has spikes of white, rose or purple flowers that attract butterflies; a great plant to add a vertical element to a garden. The blooms are ideal for cutting/drying.