How do y’all decide the balance between dead heading for more blooms or letting flowers go to seed for the benefit of local birds? I have one of the few flower gardens on my block and the only native garden, so pretty much all of my flowers are beneficial seeds so I want to support them, but it would also be nice to get more blooms.
This won’t work for all flowers, but some seeds will still ripen off the bush. You could try cutting just some of the spent blooms, maybe with a bit more stem or even some supporting leaves, but I don’t know if that matters. Pile them somewhere nearby/accessible to birds and just check back in a couple weeks to see if they ripened on their own. Weeds do it all the time and some native plants, like aster, evening primrose, or mustard families may do the same.