There’s no better way to brighten up a dreary winter day than with a basket of bright flowers, or a vase of fragrant branches.
We link to vendors to help you find relevant products. If you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission.
It’s especially gratifying when you cultivate them yourself in the dead of winter, with a process called “forcing.”
What Is Forcing Blooms?To force the blooming process is to imitate what nature does outside, by doing it inside.
This means recreating the cold of winter, the warmth of spring, and the rain that falls, to coax flowers to open before they would normally.
Coaxing indoor blooming is a favorite pastime of gardeners who find it difficult to wait for the ground to thaw and outdoor gardening to resume.
I’m one of them.
My least favorite time of year is the middle of winter, when the skies are gray and the wind is fierce.
That’s when I look longingly out the windows to my frozen garden, and count the days ‘til spring. And that’s when I think about my dad.
He first introduced me to forcing blooms, as we walked through the yard on pleasant winter days, snipping forsythia and willow branches to create an indoor display.
It’s easy and fun to create artistic bouquets of branches and flowering bulbs. Read on to learn how!
From Dormant Twig to Flowering FoliageDo you have forsythia, pussy willow, fruit trees, or other flowering shrubs and trees in your yard?
Go outside on a nice winter day, when the sun is shining and the temperature’s above freezing. Look closely at your shrubbery, and notice the nodules on the branches.
These are next season’s flower and leaf buds, and they’re in a dormant phase through the winter months until they
Read more on gardenerspath.com