The Flower We Should All Be Growing This Summer!

An article by Travis Key from Lazy Dog Farm

When it comes to summer gardening, finding flowers that not only thrive in the heat but also support the local ecosystem can be a challenge. Ageratum, often known as floss flower, is an excellent choice that meets both criteria. This vibrant and hardy plant is perfect for adding a splash of color to your garden while providing numerous benefits for bees and other pollinators. Here’s why ageratum is a fantastic flower to grow in the middle of summer and how it benefits bees.

1. Heat Resilience

Ageratum is well-known for its ability to thrive in hot summer conditions. Native to tropical and subtropical regions, ageratum is exceptionally heat-tolerant, making it an ideal flower for mid-summer blooms. It can withstand high temperatures and full sun, ensuring a beautiful and vibrant garden even during the hottest months of the year. Its resilience means less worry about wilting or fading, providing consistent color and life to your outdoor space.

2. Long Blooming Season

One of the standout features of ageratum is its long blooming season. These flowers start blooming in late spring and continue to produce vibrant blooms well into the fall. This extended period of flowering ensures that your garden remains colorful and lively for months, providing a constant source of nectar for bees and other pollinators throughout the growing season.

3. Attractive to Bees and Other Pollinators

Ageratum flowers are particularly attractive to bees due to their bright colors and the sweet nectar they produce. Bees are drawn to the vibrant blue, purple, pink, and white hues of ageratum flowers. These colors are highly visible to bees, which rely on their keen sense of color vision to locate nectar sources. By planting ageratum, you can create a bee-friendly garden that supports the local bee population, which is crucial for pollination and the health of your garden ecosystem.

4. Nectar-Rich Blooms

The nectar-rich blooms of ageratum provide an abundant food source for bees. Bees need nectar for energy and to produce honey, and ageratum flowers offer a generous supply. The structure of ageratum blooms makes it easy for bees to access the nectar, ensuring they can feed efficiently. By supporting bees with ample nectar, you help sustain their populations, which is vital given the current challenges faced by bees, including habitat loss and pesticide exposure.

5. Low Maintenance

Ageratum is a low-maintenance plant, making it an excellent choice for gardeners of all experience levels. It requires minimal care once established, needing only regular watering and occasional deadheading to promote continued blooming. Its hardy nature means it can thrive in various soil conditions, though it prefers well-drained soil. This low maintenance requirement allows you to enjoy a beautiful, bee-friendly garden without a significant time investment.

6. Pest Resistance

Ageratum is known for its pest-resistant qualities. It tends to repel common garden pests such as aphids and spider mites, reducing the need for chemical pesticides that can harm bees and other beneficial insects. This natural pest resistance helps maintain a healthy garden environment, making ageratum an eco-friendly choice for gardeners who want to avoid harsh chemicals.

Ageratum Growing Tips

Ageratum seeds are extremely tiny, so we don’t recommend direct seeding them in the garden. We plant our seeds in seed starting trays with individual cells and transplant once they’ve germinated and formed a nice, solid root ball.

There are several different varieties of ageratum that you’ll find online. We like a variety called “High Tide” that gets a little taller than most other varieties. Ageratum tends to grow lower to the ground than other flowers, but the High Tide variety can get 2-2.5 feet tall.
Plant ageratum transplants after the risk of frost has passed in the spring or anytime in the summer months. We love doing a mid-summer planting so that it continuously blooms into the fall months. Space transplants a few inches apart in your beds or containers. A thick planting like this will provide immense beauty once they start growing more.

Although ageratum is generally drought and heat tolerant, the transplants should be watered well initially. Once they get extensive roots formed in the soil, they won’t need as much water as most of the other plants in your garden.

Although not completely necessary, it’s not a bad idea to prune or remove the blooms once a month. This will keep your plants blooming all the way until your first frost date in the fall or winter months. You can be delicate with this and use hand pruners or grab your favorite pair of hedge shears and go to town.

Thousands of gardeners have been tuning in to The Lazy Dog Farm YouTube channel where Travis covers a variety topics ranging from how to successfully start seedlings to how to make a flavorful hot sauce that packs a punch. Accompanied by his wife Brooklyn and their two boys, the gardens on their 2 acre homestead in southwest Georgia are always filled with a wide variety of vegetables that are enjoyed fresh or preserved for later.