Not blooming
Picture a Magnolia tree ball like the one above, just bigger. The owner is upset because it’s not blooming. It’s a green ball and it sends out new shoots like most growing trees. Now what?
Yesterday I thought about this problem while gardening at a client’s place. She had the small Magnolia ball you see above. It does look “wild” but not everything has to be balled into formal shapes. You can snip it lightly and leave it looking natural.
I took out a few of the biggest shoots with my snips but I didn’t remove any with buds on them. That’s the key takeaway from this blog post. When you power shear your Magnolia indiscriminately as soon as it pushes out a few shoots, you remove the buds.
No buds, no flowers! Obviously.
Pro advice
Now back to the online post. I advised the owner to stop touching it. Leave it alone so it can set new buds and then flower. We see this a lot with shrubs: people are eager to remove spikes from their shrubs but this also eliminates buds. And many of these buds need months to set and then flower the following season. When you remove them, the shrub doesn’t have time to set new buds. No buds, no flowers!
Rhododendrons and lilacs come to mind as I write this.
So prune deciduous Magnolias in summer, soon after flowering, and then leave it alone. Evergreen Magnolias should be pruned in spring.
Prune after flowering
Now enjoy the Magnolia flowers and then prune the tree soon after. I recommend skipping power shears and hand pruning the tree. If you make bigger cuts you can give it a tree look; unless you like looking at balls.
Evergreen Magnolias like M. grandiflora should be pruned in spring; deciduous Magnolias should be pruned in summer.
Conclusion
If your Magnolia never flowers, one potential problem might be frequent pruning which preserves the balled look. Leave it alone and see if it flowers. I suspect it will.
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