Ep 196. Encouraging Indoor Spring Blooms of Hope

Mary Stone discusses the how-tos of encouraging early indoor spring blooms that go beyond her go-to of Forsythia. She shares a story by her friend Vicki Johnson, a garden writer and photographer, who colorfully describes an assortment of Spring Flowering Woody Plants to enjoy. The episode concludes by suggesting we grow hope by spreading kindness and love amidst the feelings of uncertainty in our world. 

Related Posts and Podcasts you'll enjoy:

Encouraging Indoor Spring Blooms  – Blog Post 

Ep 53. Shaping Up With Forsythia

Forsythia Hedge at Hospice- Blog Post

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I'd love to hear your garden and nature stories and your thoughts about topics for future podcast episodes. You can email me at AskMaryStone@gmail.com.

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Mary Stone, Columnist & Garden Designer
                                        AskMaryStone.com

More about the Podcast and Column:

Welcome to Garden Dilemmas, Delights, and Discoveries.

It's not only about gardens; it's about nature's inspirations, about grasping the glories of the world around us, gathering what we learned from mother nature, and carrying these lessons into our garden of life. So, let's jump in in the spirit of learning from each other. We have lots to talk about.

Thanks for tuning in, Mary Stone
Garden Dilemmas? AskMaryStone.com
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Transcript

Ep 196 Encouraging Indoor Spring Blooms of Hope
Sun, Mar 02, 2025 10:18AM • 12:17
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Spring blooms, Forsythia, Indoor gardening, Peat mining, Hydrangea, Cold storage, Flowering shrubs, Encouraging blooms, Garden inspiration, Nature's lessons, Environmental support, Garden dilemmas, Seasonal changes, Kindness and love.
SPEAKERS
Mary Stone

Mary Stone  00:00
Mary, Hello, fellow lovers of all things green. I'm Mary Stone, and welcome to garden dilemmas, delights, and discoveries. It's not only about gardens. It's about nature's inspirations, about grasping the glories of the world around us, gathering what we learn from Mother Nature, and carrying these lessons into our garden of life. So, let's jump in, in the spirit of learning from each other. We have lots to talk about. 

Mary Stone  00:26
Hello there. It's Mary Stone, and welcome to the screen porch. We are rolling into March, and Mother Nature is giving us a spring tease. It was close to 50 degrees and sunny the last few days, and today, there is a drizzle that you may hear. The snow is melting, and that makes me a bit sad, but there's something lovely about the taste of spring to come. And we can bring spring indoors early by taking in some stems from our woody plants, the spring flowering ones, and bringing them indoors to encourage them to bloom early, which will be today's topic. 

Mary Stone  01:01
But first, thanks to those who reached back after our last chat, Healing from Hyper Humus Peat Mining, I am glad that more of us will help support the cause by avoiding potting soil and other products with peat moss. So I heard back from Christine Dunbar, the Paulins Kill Watershed Coordinator of the Food Shed Alliance, who was the organizer of the event. She wrote that she appreciated my interest in gardening and the environment and how perfectly it came together in the blog. She forwarded the story to the Food Shed Alliance folks and other speakers who I hope will enjoy the story as well. And then she said, Would you be interested in another adventure sometime? Of course, I will, and I look forward to another time that we visit with them. It's a worthy cause to support those who help our water systems stay healthy and clean. So, on to this week's story, and it starts like this.

Mary Stone  01:57
Hello, fellow lovers of all things green. Spring is soon to arrive, and many are anxious for green with a splash of color. My go-to is harvesting branches of Forsythia, and there are other flowering woody plants you can bring indoors too, I look forward to sharing. Encouraging Forsythia to bloom indoors, some call forcing Forsythia, but encouraging sounds gentler will brighten the house these last weeks of winter. And it's simple and such fun to do, and you can make more plants. 

Mary Stone  02:28
On a day above freezing, cut branches one to two feet long as if you were pruning. Cutting at a steep angle helps water uptake. Choose healthy stems you won't miss on the plant, and be sure to pick those that have plentiful flower buds. They are typically fatter than leaf buds, which is how you can tell the difference. Choose a flower vase that won't tip over and add four to six inches of water—place in a bright room above 60 degrees away from the direct sun or heat. Recut the stem ends the next day and change the water every few days. Once your blooms bloom in a few weeks, mist them so they last longer. When the flowers fade, leaves will emerge, and your love leaves will likely sprout roots. So why not nurture them to add more to your yard? You can continue to change the water every few days, and then, after the risk of frost in spring, plant your forsythia babies right in the ground, loosen up the soil about eight inches and group three to five babies six inches apart, and soon you'll have a lovely living wall. And in the next spring, they will be a glorious blaze of yellow. 

Mary Stone  03:34
And as we spoke about in episode 53, Shaping up with Forsythia, while I prefer to have Forsythia in its natural shape, and I usually stage them in a distance on a property so that they can be in their natural shape. But at the Home for Hospice, they have a hedge row of Forsythia they prune into a shape. And I have to admit, I've grown very fond of them.

Mary Stone  03:59
 A dear friend of mine, and garden writer and photographer Vicki Johnson shared one of her stories about persuading early flowers that encompasses many more treasures, and she invited me to share it with you. I adore the way she writes and the color of her words that starts like this.

Mary Stone  04:16
 The garden is still blanketed with snow and ice and frost. Feathers glisten our window panes while blustery winds rattle at the door. It is March The month of transition from Frozen, unyielding winter to fitful spring, but we can feel it coming. The sky is brighter behind the curtains when the alarm sounds in the morning and the sun still hangs above the horizon as we drive home from work. There are days when it is warm enough to leave my jacket on the peg inside the house, even though the snow and ice is still piled up against the north-facing walls spring it's really coming. The snow really will melt away, but until then, it is possible to trick Mother Nature and have flowers from your own garden gracing your home. We can go into our own gardens, cut branches and twigs from spring flowering shrubs and trees and persuade them into flowering weeks before their natural bloom cycle.

Mary Stone  05:14
 There could be dogwood blossoms glistening on a mantelpiece or an arch of creamy magnolias draped across the dining room sideboard a month before they appear outside. Flower and leaf buds on spring flowering shrubs and trees are formed in the fall before the plant goes into their winter dormancy. Our favorite lilacs, dogwoods and rhododendrons require a winter chill temperatures below 40 degrees before they will flower. But after that, small branches can be harvested and brought inside where they can be conditioned and brought in to bloom. 

Mary Stone  05:50
To increase the odds for success, look for younger branches with a large number of buds. Using sharp, clean pruners, cut sections at least 12 inches long. When taking a large limb, be very careful to cut a couple of inches above the collar, where the branch joins the trunk, leaving the two to three inch knob on the tree that will allow the wound to heal over quickly before insects or diseases can set in. Put the cut stems in a bucket of water immediately, and if the branches were frozen when they were cut, soak them overnight in tepid water in the bathtub or a wash tub,.

Mary Stone  06:26
Place the bucket of branches away from the direct sunlight where temperatures hover around 60 to 65 degrees. And this kind of makes me giggle, because I keep my house about those temperatures, but Vicki suggests that you can put them in a garage or an enclosed porch or an unused room in the house, because higher temperatures can cause the buds to dry up and fall off or open too quickly, resulting in flowers that are small or discolored. It usually takes a minimum of one to two weeks of cold storage before buds will flower. 

Mary Stone  07:00
I am pausing here so that you can hear the joyful sound of the Canada geese. They're not returning home. They're the ones that never left for the winter. They seem happier too that spring is in the air. Such a beautiful sound.

Mary Stone  07:19
 As the buds prepare to open, the branches will take up a lot of water, so replenish and or change the water supply frequently. When the buds begin to show color, enjoy them in arrangements all around your home. Vicki went on to share a bit of the history of forcing branches and doors. She writes, The epitome of elegance and simplicity, the practice of forcing branches into bloom is centuries old in the garden plants of China. Peter Valder writes that for 1000s of years, the Chinese have celebrated the new year by decorating their homes and shops with forced blooms from peach trees, considered a symbol of new life, good health and eternal youth. They are often combined in arrangements with twigs of flowering plum, a blossom that also represents longevity and rebirth. 

Mary Stone  08:12
Forsythia,quince and pussy willows are three of the easiest to persuade into flower. However, perhaps one of the best choices would be star or tulip magnolia. Our spring weather is unkind to these favorites here in New Jersey, it's a rare year when magnolias are not nipped in the bud, or if they do make it into flower, they are too often burned with a hard late freeze, turning the glorious pink and white flowers into brown mush. Bringing a branch inside to bloom lets us enjoy them for several weeks while the flowers slowly open. So lovely. 

Mary Stone  08:47
Vicki shared a list of trees and shrubs recommended for forcing and the number of weeks required in cool storage to bring them to flower. I'll put that list in the blog post and, of course, a link in the show notes, but I'm going to run through the list quickly in terms of the woody plants you can select from, because just dreaming about them will lift your spirits and bring in a bit of spring into your hearts. 

Mary Stone  09:14
In addition to Forsythia, lilac and pussy willows we've spoken about, there's cornus mas, there's flowering dogwood, red bud, honeysuckle, crabapples, almond trees, cherry, Magnolia, Japanese quince, spirea, mock orange, flowering pear and Rhododendron, including azaleas. So many beautiful spring flowering woody plants you can bring indoors to enjoy, to give you that taste of spring early. And rather than call it forcing them to flower, we're going to call it persuading, as Vicki does, or encouraging, as I like to call it. It's gentler, it's kinder, and kindness is more beautiful, isn't it? Garden dilemmas. AskMaryStone.com.

Mary Stone  10:02
Speaking of encouraging. As we think about what's going on in the world, gosh, there's so many things that are upsetting that can make us feel helpless and out of control, and we don't understand a lot of it. And of course, then we hear versions of the story that are different from other versions of the story, depending on what we're listening to. And so I encourage all of you to find the source of the information, rather than a newscaster or podcaster or anyone else reiterating the information, because some of that comes with their own point of view, of which may not be accurate. 

Mary Stone  10:39
Hearing the truth and living the truth is part of what we're here to do. And when we harbor fear or anger, we are perpetuating more of that amongst each other, which does not help anything. Does it? Only kindness and love help. Because when you think about it, the only thing we have to do in this life, really, is to love. We're not here to judge, we're here to love and by loving others and loving ourselves, it will grow into something magnificent and peaceful, and that is what we all wish for, isn't it? So thanks for coming by. I always enjoy our time together, and thank you, Vicki, for sharing your story and insights about other woody plants, besides my go to Forsythia to bloom indoors, to give you a glint of spring. Seasons change and they come so quickly. And so cherish every single one of them, every single day, every single season we are here to love our lives. Thank you for sharing a bit of yours with me. See you next time on the screen porch. 

Mary Stone  11:47
You can follow garden dilemmas on Facebook or online at Garden dilemmas.com and on Instagram at hashtag. Mary Elaine Stone, Garden Dilemmas Delights and Discoveries is produced by Alex Bartling. Thanks for coming by. I look forward to chatting again from my screen porch and always remember to embrace the unexpected in this garden of life. Have a great day.