How To Prevent Your Mums From Flopping? Wire Them Up - October 2026

Tired of those Mums that you bought for your front porch keep splaying wide open and flopping over, revealing an empty crown?  That's what happens when the tips of the flower stems get weighted down with the blooms, as they open up and grow.  That is...if you keep them alive until then.  Mums are hard to make work, but when they do, they're beautiful.  

So, you likely know all the tips by now:  soak the root ball in water.  Water from the bottom-up.  Don't buy them too early in the season.

Here's the best tip I can give you in terms of something you can do to keep them looking good:

Wire them up.  

Wrap a wire or string around the stems to corral them together.  And, keep the crown of the mums together and the stems upright.

Here, below are a couple of photos of the Mums we brought home for our front porch this weekend.  I used padded garden wire around the stems:

I also placed the nursery pot into a garden trug that is full of water, to soak up.  Watering from the bottom - via the roots.  

I've shared this tip for securing your front porch Fall decor mums over the years.

Here's my "wire up your Mums" post from 2025.  

Here's my "You should wire up your Mums to keep them from flopping" post from 2024.  

And, here's a post from 2017, when I seem to have first posted about wiring up your mums.