It's never too early to start thinking about preparing for the next season in the garden, and that includes tidying up your yard and ticking off the last of your jobs for the current season. For late summer, that means identifying when to deadhead plants to ensure they stay healthy through dormant months and are ready to push out another set of bright blooms.
Among the best summer flowers are pentas plants, or Pentas lanceolata, charming shrubs with clusters of blooms that often grow in pink, red and white. They're native to tropical climates, including southern Africa, and grow across US hardiness zones 10+. These stunning plants will flower profusely though the hottest part of the year, but as fall creeps in you'll need to add deadheading pentas to your late summer and early fall gardening checklist.
