Learn / Ask The Landscape Professional
I have a Flowering Quince in my yard and every year at this time it bursts into beautiful blooms, but not this year. There are a few blooms at the bottom, but for the most part it's bare. What's going on? Carol
Answer
That's a great question. The cause of your problem started back last fall when we had
very warm weather all the way into December. Temperatures were in the 70s many of the
days and several different types of plants (like Flowering Quince, Weeping Cherry, some
azaleas and some rhododendrons) were encouraged to bud and get ready to bloom. Some
actually did. So by the middle of last December the plant in your picture would have been
full of buds and all ready to pop with flowers. Soon afterwards, as a result of a very
hard frost, all the flower buds that were on the shrub were killed. Since the plant had
expended all of its energy in December to make the flowers, it would not be able to bloom
again in the spring. In your picture, I see a few blooms down at the base of the plant and
the rest of the plant is bare. The reason is because the flowers along the base of the
shrub were more protected from the frost by the branches above and were kept from fully
freezing. Your Flowering Quince will be full of flowers next spring as long as we have
a cool November and December so as not to encourage fall flowering. It would be ok to
prune your Quince now if it needs it.
View As PDF
To view a PDF of this article, please
click here.
About Linda Lillie
Linda K. Lillie is the President of Sprigs & Twigs, Inc, the premier
landscape design and maintenance, tree care, lawn care, stonework, and carpentry
service provider in southeastern Connecticut since 1997. She is a graduate of
Connecticut College in Botany, a Connecticut Master Gardener and a national
award winning landscape designer for her landscape design and landscape installation work.
