Bouvardia

Temperature:
55-65 F

A handsome evergreen shrub with clusters of white, pink, or red flowers. The white bouvardias have a sweet jasmine-like scent. Purchase your first plant and make cuttings if you desire to grow more than one. Take stem cuttings in spring and root in a mixture of clean sharp sand and peat over bottom heat. Transfer to 2-inch pots two or three cuttings to a pot containing soil with an abundance of leafmold or other organic matter, on the alkaline side.

Never allow bouvardias to want for water. Apply weak solutions of high-nitrogen fertilizer. Give full sun except during the peak heat of summer, when light shading is necessary to prevent scorching of foliage. Stagger pinching while plant is in active growth to promote flowering from June to January. Plants should be cut back after flowering and given less water until February.

If plants are shaded with black cloth for a month after flowering ceases, and grown at 65 F or higher, they may be brought into flower a second time.

Recommended:

B. ternifolia, red flowers; B. Humboldtii, fragrant white flowers.