Pruning Butterfly Bushes (Buddleia)

Today is all about pruning butterfly bushes. In this video, I'll cover when to prune, why you should prune your butterfly bushes, as well as how to prune them. All butterfly bushes do need to be pruned, even the small indoor varieties. You just won't have as much work to do. I'm Laura from Garden Sanity. Let's get started. So the best time to prune your butterfly bushes is in the spring, after you see the new growth starting. And that's key. With a lot of shrubs, including panicle hydrangeas, for example, you're pruning them in early spring. It's fine. It's not a big deal. But with butterfly bushes, they tend to leaf out and bud out very late, much later. As you can see, I've got a lot of things already fully blooming, fully green, but the butterfly bushes are just starting. When you wait for the new growth to come out, it makes it a lot easier to make your pruning cuts. Now, in colder zones, it could mean waiting much later than you're used to. It could mean you might be waiting until mid-June. It really depends on your zone, how the growing season's going. But trust me, when you wait for the new growth to appear, it makes this job so quick and so easy. Now, if it's the fall season when you're watching this video, because you googled, how to prune my butterfly bushes, and you want to do this as part of your fall cleanup, put the pruners down and back away from your butterfly bushes. Fall is not the correct season to prune these because it can cause a lot of winter damage. So spring is the right time. It's one less chore you have to do in the fall. You can knock it out very easily right now in the spring. So why prune them at all? Some people with older varieties, they don't prune them at all, and they say they're fine. But here's some reasons why you should prune them every year. The first is weak stems. Butterfly bush stems are not as sturdy as some other summer flowering shrubs, like panicle hydrangeas, like I mentioned. So if you leave your butterfly bushes tall and a tropical storm comes through, your unpruned shrubs may crack and break, and then you're going to have to prune them anyway. Second, pruning keeps them bushy and full instead of gangly and more open and sparse. Third, the flowers come from new growth. If you remember my shrubs from last summer, and I'll show you video here, they were covered in flowers top to bottom, inside and out, and all of that was from the current year's growth. And lastly, if you don't prune them at all, flowers will only appear on the new growth, which means at the ends and the top of the plant, the new growth of the season. It's not going to look great and you'll be disappointed. I know I would be. Supplies needed include bypass pruners or hand pruners, and then a larger pair of bypass pruners, long-handled loppers sometimes they're called, and that's for the thicker branches. And then gardening gloves, just to your hands protected. So I have two true blue butterfly bushes. That's hard to say in a row, two true blue. They get three to four feet tall on average, and I have two of them. What I did do was I went ahead and I pruned this first one on purpose so that I could explain a lot of things to you more easily, and then I'll go ahead and prune the second one. So as you can see, I pruned it down pretty short compared to, let me step back again, compared to what the other one looks like. What you can do for a hard pruning, and you should do a hard pruning on your butterfly bushes, is prune them down to about, you could do it anywhere between six inches or 18 inches from the ground. I did a happy medium and I did about 12 inches from the ground, and it's as simple as this. Because you waited smartly until the new leaf buds came out, you're able to just find a leaf bud, like this one right here, and cut right above it. And you'll see that's what I did in every case. In every case there's some leaf buds that'll come out and in no time at all this is going to grow pretty quick. You'll be amazed at how fast this comes back after pruning. Pruning encourages shrubs to start regrowing and putting out new growth, and that's why I actually do most of my pruning in the springtime. Because what happens in the fall is you start pruning things back, you're encouraging it to grow, and then your first fall freeze is going to damage the plant and kill off all that new growth. It's better to wait till spring. So I use my hand loppers for the majority of the shrub, except for the middle canes that seem to be the thickest. So I used my long-handled loppers for that. And then I also trimmed off any spindly branches. So now that I've shown you the basics of what it looks like when you're done, and have no fear and no worries because this will grow back and it will be once again as big as this and filled with flowers, let's do this one. I'll show you how I do it. So if you're really nervous about all of a sudden cutting a big branch down, you can do it in chunks. You know, if you want to take off this top part first, and then that makes it, flick it over on the pile, makes it easier to start seeing where the growth is, you can do that. But honestly, it's just as simple to start all the way at the bottom. So for this branch right here, what I'm going to do because it's thicker, is I'm going to get out the long-handled loppers. Much easier on me, much easier on the shrub. And I'm going to go where I see new growth, and I see it right there. So right above it is where I'm going to make my cut. So since I've got the loppers, let me do this other heavy one here. I try to keep them all about the same height. I'm going to go to this one right here. Take that one off. Now here's the one where I just made a cut with the long-handled loppers. And you see there's these two little stems on either side of it. You don't need these stems. There are going to be so many stems that are going to grow out of this, that you can just cut those off. Not a big deal. And right here is some new growth coming out. This is a pretty thick stem as well. So I'm going to try to keep them all around the same height. This one's a little taller, but that's okay because I didn't see any new growth right off the bat. I just want to keep this one a little tall. These are going to shoot out more, so it's okay if they're a little bit shorter. And I think this one could also use some long-handled loppers. Let's see. How about this guy right here? Okay, so apologies for that lawnmower. I wasn't prepared for that. So anyway, once you're done with pruning the large thick branches, then you can go in with your hand loppers and prune the rest. And it's very easy to do. You can do all this in just a few minutes. Okay, so now what I want you to see are what I'm left with after doing an overall pruning, is you'll see when I get in closer with the camera, you'll see this stem, and there's no growth on it whatsoever. So that can come off. And this spindly guy can also come off. So I'll prune those off. Then you got this guy in the middle. He's dead, so I'll take him off. So I also want to show you an example of what I mentioned before, where you have some spindly branches. So I'm going to take this one off. And for this guy, I'm going to come in close to show you, it's got some really nice growth right there. And so I want to keep that growth. And I'm just going to make the cut actually right above it. Okay, so now I took off all the rest of the stems. And the last thing I want to do, of course, is compare it to the other one and just make sure they're relatively even. If you only have one, you're lucky. So that's what they both look like now. And the bees you've been hearing are buzzing because of the gorgeous prairie fire crabapple that is looking lovely right now. I think the next video I do is going to be on this tree. So here's all that I have to clean up. And that was a lot of the shrub taken off. And now they're all set for the season. Usually in my pruning videos, I tell you to fertilize after you're done. But with butterfly bushes, fertilizer isn't really needed. If you want to, you can add some slow-release general organic fertilizer, like Espoma Plant Tone, to the area around your butterfly bush. You can sprinkle it around and then water it in or let Mother Nature water it in for you. But with butterfly bushes, it's really not necessary at all to fertilize them. So once you've pruned your butterfly bushes, there's really nothing else you need to do to these shrubs. During the season, you may want to deadhead and remove the spent flower heads. And I've got a video you can watch right now to show you exactly how easy that is to do. Until next time, happy gardening!