How to Grow Summer Flowers in Central Florida Garden

The foxgloves and delphiniums have withered despite the deadheading and extra care given to keep them vibrant. Summer in central Florida gardens is pretty brutal for most of the cottage garden variety flowers. The trick here for the foxgloves and delphiniums is to make sure they don't dry out in the very sandy soil. We regularly add mulch, fertilize, and, I think most importantly, we try to put these northern beauties in places where the midday or afternoon sun is cut by the tree canopy. But by the midsummer time when the sun is the highest in the north, even our shaded areas are reduced. So we have replaced the delphiniums and foxgloves with zinnias, salvia and the small trailing petunias.

Hollyhocks, though, are another story. They seem to thrive in almost anyplace we put them. In fact, they drop seeds and sprout volunteers in some of the most unlikely places. We look at these baby plants as a windfall and carefully transplant them to areas where they can grow. We did find that they like areas of the yard that are on the dry side, but they still need some watering if we don't get rain for a few days during the heat of the summer. Otherwise, these hollyhocks require nothing, not even staking due to their tap root. We had heard over and over that hollyhocks don't grow in Florida. We can easily prove that wrong!