I do grow a lot of annuals from seed, like you, mxk3. Because none of them are sterile, they either need deadheading or they fizzle out...and, as you might guess, i am hopeless at staying on top of deadheading. So yep, I do have to decide on a point at which the floral display is looking a bit thin and I pull them. Because I have such a tiny garden, I have been used to constantly shuffling things in and out of view anyway. If you grow mostly perennials, rather than removing them, I have learned to cut them back really quite savagely, otherwise, my garden looks unkempt and uninspiring. It is doing so at the moment because all the early summer stuff is over but the salvias, dahlias and repeat flushes of alstroemerias and hardy geraniums are just beginning to do their thing. This is a seasonal cycle which I expect but still manages to give me some grief and uncertainty every July/early August.

I think a lot of magazine gardens can be really a bit disingenuous, taking photos at the peak of bloom and never showing the same garden view a month or so later. More honest garden writers will truthfully admit to replanting,and replacing less than stellar performers because, as we all know, there are NO plants which will bloom continually for 5 months of the year (although I see these claims made over and over). While my alstroemerias will be in bloom from May to late November, there will be one or 2 periods where there are no blooms at all because the plant is rebuilding its reserves for another go round. I am mostly happy to have plants which look decent throughout the summer, even if it is just a new flush of foliage.

It is very likely related to my climate but I have never had the need to replace annual containers midseason. Typically, I plant them up in May and they continue on until frost or the days become too short for them to survive or flower reliably. Stalwarts include pelargoniums, dahlias, petunias and calibrachoas. Sometimes they even survive winter in situ. I do also tend to have non-annuals or temperennials as part of the mix and they also chug along happily well on late into the year.

O, I don't grow those plants - by annuals, I mean cornflowers, sweetpeas, crepis, red flax, calendulas. I never really do the traditional semi-hardy bedding plants (dunno why, I just don't). Cosmos and dahlias don't even get going until quite late so will see out the season but typically, I do an autumn planting of annuals and then a spring planting because none of them really keep going endlessly (although they might, if I was a bit more punctilious about deadheading the (hundreds of) flower heads.

I usually do not, but my pots look ugly. I cut back my petunias 2 weeks ago and they did not like it at all.

I usually don’t, but I did recently replace a hanging basket that deer had completely devoured.

At least annuals are cheap this time of year, if you can find any. My hanging basket was only $5, but I can count on it to bring me joy for at least the next two months (as long as I keep it well-sprayed with Bobbex!).

In late July I removed nasturtiums I was growing in two planter boxes by the front porch. They were showing leaf scorch and getting chewed by cabbage loopers. I replanted one box with a combination of variegated tapioca and yellow-leafed Duranta (nice foliage contrasts); the other box now contains two varieties of Achimenes, which do well outdoors in partial sun.