When to prune butterfly bushes?
- Botanical name
- Buddleja davidii
- Family
- Scrophulariaceae
Butterfly bushes are pruned from February to March. They are planted from March to May.
Butterfly bushes are woody perennials.
The butterfly bush carries its flowers on the shoots of the current year, so it is cut back hard every spring without the loss of a single flower.
Pruning holds the butterfly bush at the lower end of its height. An uncut shrub spreads considerably wider than the 2 metres of spacing set out for it.
In a hard winter the top growth of the butterfly bush is killed by frost, and in spring it shoots again from the base. Frosted shoots are removed at the regular pruning.
Butterfly bushes through the year
- pruning
- planting
In short
Growing conditions
Are butterfly bushes toxic to cats and dogs?
No. Butterfly bushes are not toxic to cats and dogs.
Pests and diseases
Listed here is every problem for which the sources name this plant as a host. The problems are not listed in order of how common they are.
- Signs
- Colonies of small aphids sit on the shoot tips and the underside of the leaves. The leaf curls and puckers, and sticky honeydew is left on everything below. The viruses they carry are more dangerous than the feeding itself.
- Prevention
- Go easy on nitrogen, because soft sappy growth is what aphids are looking for. Encourage the predators (ladybirds, lacewings, parasitic wasps). Use a reflective mulch, which puts them off settling, and a strong jet of water to knock the colony off the tips.
- What to do
- Potassium soap works on contact and only while it is wet, so it has to reach the underside of the leaf. On drought-loving plants and in heat it can scorch, so apply it in the evening.
- Signs
- The plant dies suddenly, often in mid season and without any decline beforehand. Peel the bark at ground level and under it there is a white or cream sheet of fungal tissue, thin as the skin of a mushroom. In the soil there are black or brown strands like bootlaces. In late summer and autumn tufts of honey brown mushrooms with a whitish ring on the stalk appear by the stumps or over dead roots.
- Prevention
- The fungus spreads through the soil with its strands, from a few centimetres to a good hand's width below the surface, and infects the roots of a living plant when it touches them. So do not leave stumps and dead roots in the ground. No plant is completely resistant, but privet, lilac, viburnum, weigela, forsythia, butterfly bush, rhododendron, thuja and walnut are particularly susceptible.
- What to do
- There are no products. The only thing that works is digging out and removing every infected root and stump, which takes away the food without which the strands in the soil do not grow. A vertical barrier of rubber or thick plastic sheet, buried about half a metre deep and standing a few centimetres above ground, stops the spread into an unaffected part of the garden.
Check the registration and the label before use.
Keep track of your plants with Tendask
Log the task and set a reminder for the next one. Every plant keeps its own history, so there is nothing to guess at.
Sources about the plant: DGUV Information 202-023 „Giftpflanzen, GBIF Backbone Taxonomy, NC State Extension Plant Toolbox, Oregon State University, Royal Horticultural Society, Wikidata. Checked between 14 and 28 August 2026. The problem descriptions also draw on: Clemson Cooperative Extension, University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, Utah State University Extension.