I live in Zone 5b. I love butterfly bushes and I have planted at least one every year, but every spring I wait for it to leaf out and nothing happens. I planted two bushes this spring one is honeycomb and one was supposed to be nanho blue but it is not the right color it is lighter blue. Before I had just mulched heavily around the base, this year I planned to cut off the bushes to the ground and cover them with straw and put some chicken wire around them to hold the straw on. Does anybody know if this will work?
Overwintering Butterfly bushes
Hi, jenny,
Butterfly bushes can be short lived in any case, but in our cold inclement winter zones they can often be nursed thru the winter with some luck and some precautions.
Here's what I've read so far:
'Experts' suggest that you refrain from pruning until late winter and leave about 18 to 24 inches of stem on your bush to forestall water getting down into the stems and causing rot. Then in spring when new green shoots come up from the ground you can trim out the dead ones.
Also, too much mulch will encourage root rot so you have to keep that under consideration. (Maybe enclose it in a overturned plastic garbage can or something for protection?)
Or perhaps you may want to wrap your buddliea in burlap or some such to protect it further if it isn't in a protected spot (like next to a south facing wall).
Of course, if it's not too big you can dig it, pot it up and bring it into the garage for its dormant period.
Just some ideas for you.... Good luck! t.
p.s. I just looked on the map to see where Kimmell was, and surprise~~I will be up in the area this weekend for the ND football game and will be staying in Shipshewana overnight. Small world. (-:
Jenny, I live in zone 4 and started butterfly bushes from seed 4 years ago. All are alive and blooming. They do tend to sprout late in the season. Once sprouting, they grow fast.
I don't do anything to them for the winter. I trim to 6" from the ground before growth begins in the spring. That's it.!
Thanks for the help tabasco. I guess I will try the burlap or the garbage can. Apparently I just have bad luck with butterfly bushes. I like them enough to get more every year but would really like to save some money by overwintering them. I'm glad I didn't prune them off already.
It is a small world I work in Topeka as a veterinarian and often go to Shipshewana to work at the sale barn. If you get time stop by the rise and roll bakery on US 20 west of shipshewana they have the best cinnamon-caramel doughnuts as well as lots of other goodies. (it is amish owned and operated so it won't be open on Sun)
Oh, darn, we will miss the donuts since they definitely lock up everywhere in Ship. on Sundays, but good tip if we ever are passing thru on another day. We usually stay at the Comfort Inn when we go to ND ftbl games (our alma mater).
About the butterfly bushes~~I don't buy the big ones at the fancy garden centers. Usually I snag a 'start' from a friend's garden. Often times you can find them as volunteers~~in some states they are considered invasive. By the end of the season they are pretty big.
Not to get too far off the subject, but north of Ship about 30min is a great greenhouse called red barn greenhouse the variety is amazing and the prices are too (Check it out at redbarngreenhouse.com). Too bad football games aren't in the spring :). I bought two of my butterfly bushes there. They only cost about $6 they weren't huge (6inch pot) but by the end of the season they are about 4ft tall. I just thought that maybe they would be bigger by the end of the season if I could overwinter them. I will have to check around and see if anybody has a start. I know that butterfly bushes are considered invasives in some areas which makes me more frustrated that I can't even get mine to live through the winter!
I had a butterfly bush planted in a ground level garden bed, southern exposure. The bush grew and bloomed beautifully. Instructions with the plant was to prune in spring when new buds appeared. Will, spring came and new buds started popping out, and rain started falling for weeks. It turned out to be a very wet spring. My yard is very slightly graded so water runs towards the street right through that garden bed. My butterfly bush drowned even though I had heavily amended the clay soil when I planted the bed. I have a Honeysuckle planted in the bed, also. It loved all the moisture and thrived, as did the Monkeyflowers. Now that bed is mounded so anything new I plant there can survive the really wet springs we've been having the last few years.