When rosemary is flowering, you have the option to either let it happen or stop it by removing the flowers. Both have their advantages and the best thing to do ultimately depends on your goals, whether they are culinary, aesthetic, or focused on the overall health of the plant and your garden as a whole.
The primary difference is that letting rosemary flower attracts bees and other pollinators which benefits your garden as a whole whereas removing the flowers encourages growth and production of new foliage.
Whether you decide to let your rosemary flower or not, it should be an informed decision since your choice determines how it will develop and behave. I have done both plenty of times over many years so I have seen what a huge difference it can make and that is precisely why I wrote this article. To help you make the right decision.
Both have a lot of advantages so to make the decision as easy as possible for you, I made a table where I compare all of them so you can easily figure out if letting your rosemary flower or not is best for you. Later in the article, I go into more detail about each point from the table and give my recommendation in case you still aren’t sure.
Advantages of Letting Rosemary Flower vs. Not (Compared)
To let your rosemary flower or prevent it by removing the flowers as soon as they appear is an important decision.
To make it easy for you, I made a table where I list all the important advantages of letting it flower compared to preventing it.
| Advantages of letting rosemary flower: | Advantages of removing rosemary flowers: |
| Flowers attract pollinators | Increased production of foliage |
| Flowering leads to the production of seeds | Extended growth and harvest period |
| Flowering rosemary can self-seed | Prevents self-seeding |
| Rosemary flowers can be eaten | Maintains optimal flavor of leaves |
| Less maintenance required | |
| Aesthetic appeal |
Since we all have different goals, what you see as an advantage might differ from what I see as an advantage, so I decided to get into everything in this article. Notice, for example, that re-seeding is listed on both sides of the table. I explain this a bit later in the article.
Keep reading if you haven’t already decided if you should let your rosemary flower or not because I will explain each of the points from the table above now. After that, I give a very specific recommendation in case you still aren’t sure what to do.
6 Great Benefits of Letting Rosemary Flower
While I sometimes prevent my rosemary from flowering, I almost always let it happen. I do this for some very specific reasons, which I cover now.
1. Flowers attract pollinators
Rosemary flowers are excellent at attracting bees and other pollinators to your garden, leading to increased biodiversity. These insects pollinate your different plants, enabling them to produce fruits and seeds which can lead to a much more productive garden.
In my opinion, this is the most important advantage of letting rosemary flower. Especially if you have a goal of harvesting a lot of crops from your garden as a whole.
2. Flowering leads to the production of seeds
If you, like me, enjoy collecting seeds from some of your plants, you should let your rosemary flower, since flowering is a crucial part of the seed production process.
Once the flowers start turning brown and begin to dry out, the seeds are almost ready to be collected. However, you should wait until they are fully brown and dry before you do so.
You can see how the seeds look as they are growing inside the flowers in the photo above. The color goes from fresh green to dark brown as they mature.
Many consider the production of seeds to be the primary thing that happens when rosemary is flowering but it is far from the only one. If you want to learn what else happens, you should check out another one of my articles where I go into more detail about what happens when rosemary is flowering.
3. Flowering rosemary can self-seed
While it is far from guaranteed to happen, flowering rosemary can self-seed, which means that it can drop its fully developed seeds which can then germinate and grow as new plants.
For rosemary to self-seed, certain conditions must be met. The most important thing is that it should happen in an area with mild winters, ideally with no frost at all, since the seedlings are fragile and can easily be killed by frost.
4. Rosemary flowers can be eaten
A question I have often seen asked online is whether rosemary flowers can be eaten and if they taste good. The answer to both is yes. Well, taste is individual but I certainly think so.
Rosemary flowers have a flavor that is similar to that of the leaves, although it is usually significantly milder. I like to use the flowers as a colorful and tasty garnish once in a while. Just make sure to also leave flowers on the plant if you do this to benefit from all the other advantages I list here. If you’re interested, I have another article where I cover more things you should know before harvesting and using flowering rosemary and its flowers.
If you’ve decided that you want to pick some of the flowers to use in cooking or something else, I recommend taking a quick look at another one of my articles where I explain the best way to pick rosemary flowers and some methods for preserving them.
5. Less maintenance required
Sure, it may seem obvious but it is definitely worth mentioning that letting rosemary flower requires much less maintenance than preventing it from doing so.
Rosemary can produce a large amount of flowers at once (as you can see in the photos in this article) and it can happen fast, so it can be difficult to keep up and remove them all early. Especially if you have a large plant or multiple plants. Not having to do that will save you a lot of time.
6. Aesthetic appeal
Of course, we want our rosemary to be productive so we can harvest a lot of the tasty foliage, but it is definitely a nice bonus if the plant also looks good. If this matters to you, consider letting it flower.
Rosemary produces beautiful small flowers that can vary from white or pale blue to purple. I did my best to get a close-up photo of some of the flowers from one of my plants which you can see below.
4 Advantages of Removing the Flowers From Your Rosemary
The best way to remove rosemary flowers is to cut them off with clean and sharp pruning shears or simply just pinch them off with your fingers. However, as I covered earlier in this article, removing the flowers isn’t always the right choice as there are a lot of advantages to letting rosemary flower.
That said, there are also a good handful of advantages to removing rosemary flowers. Let’s explore them now.
1. Increased production of foliage
When rosemary is flowering, most of its energy is diverted from growth and production of new foliage to flowering and production of seeds. By stopping the flowering process, energy will be diverted back into growth and foliage production.
So if you don’t care about the benefits the flowers bring, consider removing them to encourage your rosemary to keep growing. The best way to do so is to cut them off with pruning shears or just pinch them off with your fingers.
2. Extended growth and harvest period
Rosemary flowering can last for a while and during this period, the plant spends most of its energy on flowering and the production of seeds, as I covered above.
That means that the overall growth and harvesting period is shorter than it would have otherwise been. Removing the flowers as soon as they appear allows the plant to stay in the growth stage, thereby extending the overall growth and harvesting period.
3. Prevents self-seeding
Self-seeding can be a good thing if you want your rosemary to spread but if you want to be in control of where new rosemary seedlings pop up in your garden, you want to avoid self-seeding. Removing flowers as soon as they appear prevents rosemary from self-seeding since it doesn’t ever finish developing its seeds.
I must mention that rosemary can only self-seed under certain conditions. The seedlings can be fragile so unless you live in a place with no risk of frost in the winter, it is highly unlikely that your rosemary will self-seed. The seeds might not even germinate.
4. Maintains optimal flavor of leaves
One of the primary arguments I hear for preventing herbs from flowering is that it affects the flavor of the foliage. This is certainly true with many herbs and to some degree with rosemary, although the change in flavor is not as significant as with some other herbs.
I usually let my rosemary flower and it doesn’t seem to affect the flavor too much but this is a matter of personal preference. So if you want to make sure the flavor of your rosemary is unaffected, you should remove the flowers as soon as they appear.
If this sounds good and you want to stop your rosemary from flowering, head over to another one of my articles where I explain the best way to remove rosemary flowers.
If You’re Still Not Sure What To Do (My Recommendation)
If you aren’t sure if you should let your rosemary flower or stop it, then don’t do anything.
Let your rosemary flower and enjoy the benefits it brings such as attracting lots of bees and other pollinators to your garden.
By letting your rosemary flower, you can also save yourself a lot of time because as you can see in the photo above, the amount of flowers rosemary produces can be rather extensive.
You can even consider helping your rosemary flower better if you’re up for a fun challenge because there are things you can do to encourage it. If that sounds interesting to you, check out one of my other articles specifically about ways to promote flowering in rosemary.
Many years ago when I first started growing rosemary, I remember one summer specifically where I did everything I could to remove the flowers and while I did get the desired results (more or less), I also spent a lot of time and energy on it.
So only remove the flowers from your rosemary if you are certain that’s what you want to do. Otherwise, just let it flower.
If you want to learn more about the flowering process in rosemary, I recommend heading over to my full guide to rosemary flowering where I explain everything about the topic including why it happens, what happens to the plant, how to deal with various flowering-related problems, and much more.