Why Too Many Flowers Can Be A Detriment To Your Garden

Imagine a garden packed with multihued flowers, splitting its seams with a bounty of blooms, scenting the air with delightful fragrances — it is a sensory feast. It turns out that flowers make people happy, and that encourages us to nurture and protect the plants. But simply letting the garden run wild because it pleases us often does more harm than good. If your flowers develop bald spots in the centers of their crowns, become leggy, or bloom less, they are probably overcrowded. Addressing overcrowding in your flower bed helps the plants stay healthy and actually promotes more blooms.

Overcrowding limits the air flow around the plants and the amount of sun that reaches the lower leaves, creating a dark, humid environment that can lead to diseases like rust fungi and powdery mildew. Rust fungi are parasites that aren't particular about which plants they attack and can cause considerable damage. Powdery mildew, also a fungus, isn't generally fatal to plants, but it can cause malformed flowers or flowers that don't open. You can prevent powdery mildew from taking over your garden by removing infected plants.

Below ground, root systems compete for water and nutrients. It's important for the flowers' root systems to grow freely without excessive competition from other plants. Some flower root systems, like begonias and other tubers, store the nutrients they need to survive dormancy, while others just need them to grow. Water uptake is an important function of all root systems and a critical part of photosynthesis, the process that keeps plants alive. Flowers competing for water may have drooping leaves, yellow leaves, or leaves that drop off. Crowded plants that have to compete for nutrients are also weaker — the flowers could be smaller and there could be fewer of them. If your plants are weakened by overcrowding, they're more susceptible to insect damage and may even die.

If your garden lacks appeal because it looks overcrowded even though it's actually just fine, you can cut back flowers that have grown too tall. In many plants, this will cause them to be bushier and produce more blooms over time. Most problems caused by an overabundance of flowers can be addressed by deadheading, the practice of removing blooms as they fade, or by rhizome or root division propagation, the process of thinning the plants by dividing one large plant into numerous smaller plants. In fact, many perennials should be deadheaded for continuous blooms.