How to Force Branches From Flowering Trees & Shrubs to Bloom Indoors

For a bit of early color and fragrance inside your home or office, branches from many common flowering trees and shrubs can be forced to blossom indoors, even when the weather outside is cold and dreary. Whether you take cuttings specifically for forcing or use some branches from your winter pruning, forcing flowering trees and shrub branches inside is fairly simple and doesn't have to cost you a penny. Best yet, flowering branches are an excellent alternative to store-bought cut flowers, which are usually imported and can come with questionable provenance.

Treehugger / Sanja Kostic

Waiting for the first flowers of spring, especially in regions with heavy snow cover, can be a major exercise in patience, but with a little bit of work, your home can have flowers in every room. From the classic forsythia and pussywillow, which are quicker to bloom, to the more exotic-looking flowers, such as magnolia, there is a wide variety of trees and shrubs to choose from, including fruit trees.

Treehugger / Sanja Kostic

When cutting branches for forced flowering, look for:

Using sharp pruning shears or garden scissors (which make a clean cut and minimize injuries to the tree), remove the chosen branches with an angled cut close to a bud or side shoot on the tree.

Treehugger / Sanja Kostic

Bring the branches indoors and put the cut ends in warm water, letting them soak overnight in a warm location and out of direct sunlight. Then recut the branches to fit the vases or other containers that you'll be using, after filling the vases with room temperature water and then adding either a commercial flower preservative or a homemade version to the water. This step isn't totally necessary, but it can help to prolong the life of the branches