The Magical Butterfly Bush

Planting, Pruning, Pairing

By Ava Green

From its graceful, arching branches to the fragrant, lilac-shaped flower clusters that draw in a kaleidoscope of butterflies, bees and hummingbirds, Butterfly Bush (Buddleia davidii), also known as Summer Lilac, is a shrub worth including in your garden.

Landscape Value

Butterfly bushes bloom throughout the summer, with some varieties flowering into the fall, and offer a wide range of colours and intensities. 

They look best planted en masse or as part of a tiered garden, paired with smaller perennials or shrubs in front of them. Evergreens make a great backdrop for perennials, and this is a plant that would be perfect punctuation in front of a cedar or yew. Since butterfly bushes are slow to get going in spring, tucking shorter, early-blooming plants in front of them helps hide that lag while everything else fills in. 

As a bonus, Buddleia are deer and rabbit-resistant, making them a solid choice if critters are an ongoing issue in your garden.

Caring for Your Butterfly Bushes

Plant your Buddleia in full sun and well-drained soil. These shrubs want 8 hours of sun a day and don’t tolerate “wet feet”.

Here in Southern Ontario (hardiness Zone 6), the butterfly bush is a deciduous shrub that’s best treated like an herbaceous perennial: cut it back each spring, never in the fall, to keep it happy and blooming well. 

Be patient in the spring, and wait for buds to start forming before you prune, then cut each stem back just above a big, healthy leaf bud. Since butterfly bushes flower on new growth, this yearly cutback is what drives a full season of blooms. In fall, deadhead spent blooms to remove seed heads (on varieties that produce them) and help keep the plant from spreading. 

Plant in the spring or summer rather than fall, so your butterfly bush has as much time as possible to get established before cold weather arrives.

Great Variety!

Butterfly Bushes come in a range of heights and colours, so there’s likely a fit for almost any spot in your garden. A few examples:  

Dwarf: "Pugster" Series

A shorter, stalkier variety that still produces full-sized flowers in rich, saturated tones on new wood. Long-blooming plants; summer into fall. 

Best for: Grouping behind spring-blooming ground covers and shorter perennials | Sun: Full sun | Mature size: 24 in. tall × 24 in. wide

Medium Height: “Miss” Series

The “Miss” series offers medium-height varieties with a graceful habit and intensely coloured, fragrant, heat-tolerant blooms on new wood.  

Best for: The middle of beds and borders, planted in groupings | Sun: Full sun | Mature size: 48-60  in. tall × 48-60 in. wide

Tall Varieties

Vase-shaped and vigorous, with large, fragrant blooms, taller varieties of Buddleja davidii, such as ‘Black Knight’ or ‘Grand Cascade’, are absolute showstoppers in any garden.

Best for: Foundation plantings or the back of borders and beds | Sun: Full sun | Mature size: 6- 8 ft. tall × 4-8 ft. wide, depending on the variety

Hosts With The Most

Butterfly bushes will draw in bees, butterflies and hummingbirds; but every pollinator ultimately needs more than nectar. They also need places to lay eggs and support their young.

That's where host plants come in. Pairing your butterfly bush with plants like cherries, spicebush, Coneflower, Joe Pye Weed, Black-Eyed Susan, and New Jersey Tea provides pollinators with nectar diversity and places to reproduce. Some butterflies and moths will lay their eggs on a wide range of plants while others are far more particular. The Monarch butterfly is the best example: milkweed is the only plant that supports a Monarch caterpillar’s life cycle, so planting milkweed near your butterfly bush is essential if you want to support Monarchs specifically.  

Figuring out which host plants suit which butterflies and moths takes a bit of research, but as with most things in the garden, diversity wins. 

Come on in to Eising Garden Centre and look at the butterfly bushes in person; we’re here to help you find the right ones for your garden!

Other resources:

How to Keep Your Butterfly Bush Blooming: https://eising.ca/how-to-keep-your-butterfly-bush-blooming

5 Ontario native host plants for butterflies and moths:

Plants that support a butterfly lifecycle:

Host plants for butterflies: