Help with butterfly bush needed

Hi, I am in need of some advice regarding my butterfly bush. My wife and I recently moved into a house. During the summer we had a fantastic bush with big long purple blooms, covered in butterflies. The only issue was it became huge, each stem was 3m long. It was starting to block the window. So I decided to cut in fown considerably, to about 60cm tall. This year it started to grow small green leaves. But now I'm concerned as those leaves are turning brown and crumbling.

I live in sweden, temperatures haven't started to get warmer, and we have had 10 days of great sunny weather. I'm wondering if I should give it a good watering?

Any help you can offer would be really appreciated.

Kind regards

Paul

 

Well I only water plants when they are dry
Is it dry?

I'd be inclined to wait until things warm up a bit if it is still cold,
Maybe it started to grow and got caught by a frost?

 

Hi, thanks for your reply.
The weather has been a bit erratic. Very wet and mild January to march. The last two weeks has been very sunny and dry, but there have been a couple of frosts in the mornings. I generally just leave it alone, but was alarmed at the condition of the leaves.

 

Hi @Paul Brazier

 

If its well established, which it sounds like it is, I doubt it will be dryness.

The mild winter would probably spurred it into growth a bit early and then got clobbered by a late frost.

 

Buddleja are pretty tough,they like sunny dry conditions. As Pete said probably the recent frosts just caught the new growth.
Over here you would prune it back hard, as you did, in spring time. They then grow away and flower mid to late summer.

 

I've seen healthy buddleias growing out of gaps in the brickwork in bridges, at least 5m from the ground. It'll take more than a bit of pruning to kill one!