Marianne's Response

Overproductive bottle bush

I have had bottle bushes for a long time. I know I have a 2 year old one. This spring I noticed that the blooms were very heavily clustered instead of single blooms the way I’ve always seen them. This caused the branches to weep down severely, showing signs of stress on the branches. I cut some of the real heavy blooms off to relieve the weight on the branches, but didn’t cut all of them off as I felt like I was butchering the plant by doing so. Now I noticed some branches completely dead because they bent too far at the cross branch.

Why is the bush doing this? I have one next to it and other parts of the yard that is not doing this.

Posted by Debby Graham on June 24, 2016

Marianne's Response

Sounds like your overly productive bottle bush may have too much water or plant food. Is it near the lawn and getting drift from high nitrogen lawn food perhaps? Go ahead and cut back any damaged or dead wood. It will sprout at the point of the cut. A leaner growing plant will be less likely to droop again. Keep growing, Marianne Binetti

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