Summer Flowers for a Grave: What Survives Heat, Sun and Weekly Mowing

Between Memorial Day and Labor Day a cemetery is a hard place for flowers. The sun is overhead for fourteen hours, the lawn is mowed every week, and a dry spell can go a month. Fresh flowers do not stand a chance, and even silk arrangements have a season's work ahead of them. Here is how to choose for it.

Flowers that read as summer

• Sunflowers. The summer flower, bright from across the cemetery, and the one most families choose for June through August.
• Gerbera daisies in orange, yellow and hot pink. Saturated and cheerful.
• Zinnias and marigolds, the garden flowers of summer, in the same strong colors.
• Hydrangeas in blue and white for a cooler, fuller look, especially in a saddle.
• Red, white and blue for the Fourth of July, which sits in the middle of the season. Our guide to Fourth of July grave flowers covers it.

Colors that survive the sun

Ultraviolet light fades dye, and summer has the most of it. In silk arrangements, reds and deep pinks fade first, sometimes noticeably within six to eight weeks of July sun. Yellows, oranges, whites and greens fade slowest. An arrangement built on yellow and white with red as an accent looks fresh at the end of summer; one built on red looks tired. If the grave is in full sun with no tree cover, weight the arrangement toward the fade-resistant colors.

Where to place them

Summer is when placement matters most, because the mowers come weekly and crews clear anything in their path without ceremony.

• In the vase. Always the safest. A turning vase in a flat marker is passed over by the mower; a granite vase on a monument base is never in the way.
• In a saddle on an upright stone, off the ground entirely.
• A staked vase hard against the stone, where allowed. Anything a foot out into the grass will be moved or removed.

Our guide to headstone vases covers the options if the grave has none.

Wind and storms

Summer thunderstorms bring the strongest winds of the year. A saddle sized to the stone and seated firmly stays put; a tall, top-heavy vase arrangement does not. Keep summer arrangements compact and low, and if the cemetery is exposed, choose a saddle over a vase.

Summer rules

Some cemeteries prohibit artificial flowers in summer to keep the grounds uniform during mowing season; national cemeteries permit fresh flowers only from mid-April to mid-October, outside the holiday windows. Most private cemeteries allow silk year-round. Check before the first summer delivery, and see our guide to cemetery flower rules for how.

The summer slot in a seasonal plan

A four-season plan puts the summer arrangement in place in June, after the Memorial Day flowers have done their work, and replaces it with the fall arrangement in September before the fade shows. That two-to-three-month life is about what silk can be asked to give in the summer sun, and it keeps the grave looking tended straight through the hardest season.