Box is one of the most popular garden shrubs and is used for many purposes: as a topiary in the garden or in tubs, as part of a border planting, as a bed border or as a hedge plant. If the plant is not cut back too much, it will bloom with inconspicuous yellow flowers. These can be very numerous and cover the whole plant.
The boxwood flowers extremely rarely
Buchs is popular bee pasture
However, the blossom only occurs in older box trees, which are at least ten years old and are also only slightly pruned. The flowering period is from March to May and depends heavily on the weather conditions. Abundant blooms the previous year are often followed by little or no blooms the following season. Nevertheless, a blooming boxwood is a coveted insect pasture, because bees, bumblebees, butterflies and other buzzing garden dwellers feast on the nectar.
Do not cut flowers
For this reason, you should never prune blooming boxwood, instead feasting on the hungry visitors. Only after flowering do you grab the pruning shears and remove the spent shoots - unless you want to let the capsule fruits that then develop mature and harvest the seeds. These are suitable for growing new plants, although the method is quite cumbersome. Boxwood is very easy to propagate using cuttings - which are always produced when pruning.
Does flowering affect growth?
Occasionally, rumors circulate on gardening forums that flowering negatively affects the growth of the plant. This assertion is based on the fact that the plant in question stopped growing during the flowering period. In fact, the Buchs does not grow at all or only slightly during this time, but catches up quickly. As a result, flowering has no negative impact on shoot growth.
What do yellow leaves mean during flowering?
However, if the plant develops conspicuously yellow leaves during flowering, there are often serious problems behind it. In many cases, she suffers from a nutrient or water deficiency as both nutrient and water requirements increase during flowering. But before you initiate countermeasures, it is best to first check the actual causes.
tips
Yellow leaves on the box can have many causes. Sometimes the plant is attacked by the box tree moth, a small butterfly whose caterpillars eat entire stocks bare.