Butterfly Bushes: Colorful and Wonderfully Scented!

Butterfly Bushes are in flower now across the region. The Nursery has several varieties still available including white, light purple, and dark purple flowering types.

Butterfly bushes attract a great variety of pollinating insects as well as hummingbirds so are good to have in the yard if you are a gardener. They have a very pleasant sweet smell which carries for some distance from the plant.

Butterfly Bushes (Buddleia sp.) bloom from June or July until frost.

Usual care includes winter pruning to reshape and dead-heading old flowers. They usually grow 5’ - 8’ tall and wide and are best grown in full sun with low to regular water.They are a good addition to a low water landscape.

Butterfly bushes occasionally die back from winter cold injury but most often re-sprout with rapid growth in spring. They are Hardy to USDA zone 5.

Photos & Narrative By:

Stephen Sain
Staff Plant Physiologist

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