Flower girl

Mostly I am a vegetable Northern gardner, however I inherited a flower garden. I'm in the process of changing it to all easy to manage perinnials, with longer lasting blooms, and some re-bloomers. I like all kinds of lilies, shasta daisies, hosta's, iris, phlox, balloon flowers, foxglove to name a few. I am in the process of "learning" about each plant, and being fall there is work to do to them. What I learned this year is some need to be cut half way down, some need to be left to die without cutting down, some need to be pruned, and some need to be cut right down. If you don't want them to spread more than the amount you planted, you need to deadhead those flowers. Lilies need to be left alone, except to take the seed pods off until they turn brown. Shasta dasies will reseed, but if you want merely to have a second flowering, deadhead them. My second flowering was shorter and smaller, but still pretty. Hosta's, if they have gotten too large, need to be split. There are two ways to do this, one you could cut through the roots with a bulb planter on the roots that have eyes, or I just slice down through the plant with a sharp shovel and plant that section of hosta in another area, mainly my neighbors yard! Iris I let the tall leaves turn brown and then cut off. Check for diseased or rotten areas on the bulbs, and remove any bulbs that are infected. Phlox you merely cut off the spent flowers if you don't want more phlox, and when it is dead, cut to the ground. Baloon flowers will reseed too so if you have enough, cut off the seed pods and they will rebloom. Foxglove will also rebloom if you deadhead the flower stems, then remove the stems completely to ground level. One additional flower I have is purple coneflower. They rebloom with or without deadheading, but they also reseed. If you leave the seed pods for the winter birds, they'll be happy! Soooo much work, soooo little time. Make sure you take out weeds from the bed! Remember if you have small children, they need to be warned about certain plants like foxglove and delphinium, as they are posionous (so are the leaves of rhubarb). Check your local nursery for more information on posionous plants.