Late flowering buddleia

[A_T]

I seem to recall reading somewhere there is a trick to getting a buddleia to flower later in the year. It involved pruning at a certain time. Does anyone know more about this? I would like to have more flowers into September when the Peacocks etc. are more abundant.

[Piers]

Hi A_T

If you prune your buddleia davidii bushes in late Spring, they will flower slightly later than if they are pruned early.

However, your best bet is to grow one of the buddleia x weyeriana hybrids (such as 'sun gold', 'honeycomb', 'moon light', 'bicolor', etc.) which flower profusely for a very extended period, usually right into November in the South. The weyeriana hybrids are usually vigorous, fast growing, and also very attractive to both butterflies and bees. Prune these varieties around the end of March for the best results.

If, however, you are limited to an existing davidii and do not have room or are not inclined to purchase a weyeriana, try pruning your davidii in the latter part of April, cutting the old wood down to two or three new shoots on each stem. If you have more than one, try staggering the pruning period to produce bushes that flower consecutively (ish) during the summer.

Feeding your buddleia bush after pruning with a rich manure will stimulate lush growth and profuse flowering. Buddleia bushes will tolerate poor soils, but they simply adore rich ones and will reward you for it, as long as they are free draining. Water logging (particularly in the winter months) is the worst enemy of buddleai davidii.

In addition, take the time to dead-head your buddleia, this will greatly prolong the flowering period of most varieties, the dead-heading process encouraging successive (and successively smaller) lateral flower spikes (with the exception of varieties such as the beautiful 'white wings').

For guaranteed late flowering and irresistible attraction to late summer nymphalids however, something like weyeriana 'moon light' is hard to beat.

Felix.

[Lee Hurrell]

Hi,

This is what I've been doing since I was young, although doubtless others will do things differently.

General rule of thumb is to prune hard after the last frost to around a third of the plant's original size. So perhaps from mid to end of May onwards.

If you have more than one plant, you could stagger the pruning so that you have at least one in flower over a longer period. I have 3 large-ish plants in my back garden and I'll prune one end of April, one end of May and one end of June so I should have one in flower from July though September.

Cheers

Lee

[David M]

Prune hard and late.

Remember, these plants grow like bamboo.

[A_T]

Thanks for the advice - sounds like pruning late is the key!

[JohnR]

I have had a buddleia x weyeriana 'honeycomb' for twelve years or so and I find it a deadly dull bush - and so do the butterflies. Maybe it's because there are good old-fashioned Michaelmas daisies near it, so they are spoilt for choice.

When pruning buddleia it's always worth a try to stick some cuttings into the ground, though they take best in autumn.

Felix, thanks for the tip about manure, I have a heap of old horse sh.. which will get barrowed over to mine this weekend.