Buddleia - nice or not?

Hi guys, first post and new member.

My neighbour and I have been over the last year or so been working on our shared garden (5 others don't touch it) and albeit he's the experienced one when gardening I do pitch in myself.

One thing I've changed my mind about over the last year is buddleia. Last summer when I identified it, I took to it and when it flowered it was quite an attractive flower but .... since then now that I know what it is, I see them everywhere and at my office there is one growing very aggressively and I must say, I now think they are quite an ugly plant and because of the very dark green leaves, it is far from eye candy.

Any thoughts on how to train it if possible or do something to it to help it along and make it more friendly looking towards garden?

 

I have a number of very well established buddleia in my garden and they were out of control when we moved in so OH pruned them very hard last winter ( I thought he was going to kill them!) and they have come back as very nice compact shrubs, growing well again but not spindly. I think it will be fab this year when it flowers and it will be worth it for the butterflies.

 

On that topic of butterflies, since we've worked on the garden we only seem to be getting one particular species of butterfly and its all white. I've yet to see anything else roam our garden :(

I've attached a picture taken just a few moments ago of the buddleia. Any thoughts? Trim now or wait until it flowers?

 

That's only a baby, probably grown from a stray seed - they do get very much bigger.
The time to prune is early March then it will flower on the new growth, producing bigger flowers, lower down than if left unpruned. Prune now and you will get no flowers til October.
One of the drawbacks with buddleja is thy do seed so freely, in some places they have taken over and crowded out other plants. Sometimes they also self seed in places where they are difficult to remove including the top of walls and even on chimneys
I agree to some extent that they are not usually a beautiful plant overall, but some varieties are much better, for instance B. Lochinch has much more silver-grey foliage which goes superbly with the lavender-blue of the flowers

 

Hate the stuff. In my book, it's a weed.

 

The, er, buy-to-let-it-rot next door to me is now growing a forest of buddleia. I must admit I rather like it - by chance the stuff which has seeded itself has deep purple flowers which look very good against the grey-green leaves. I may change my mind when we are totally overwhelmed by the stuff, however.

Thompson and Morgan is currently offering a buddleia called 'Buzz' which is supposed to stay relatively dwarf/compact and should therefore be a better bet for small gardens than the original unreconstructed monster. I've got one on order. I'll keep you posted.

 

I don't particularly like it - I inherited loads here in this garden - most of which I've taken out. I used to prune them back really quite hard, to look nice, but got fed up with taking all that pruning to the tip haha! I bought myself an orangey-yellow one instead thou, to fill a gap and I like that! Slightly more tropical looking

 

Oh yes, I think you mean buddleia globosa, the orange ball tree. I love it! It looks like a child's drawing of a flowering tree.

 

That one is on my list of plants to buy (although god knows where I could plant it!)

 

It's on my list, too, Aaron ... but I have nowhere to plant it. Keep wondering how long it would survive in a pot ...

 

I have too many things in pots. But...there is always the postage sized stamp of a front garden that requires digging up, removing the coloured gravel that I put down a few years ago (bad idea with no membrane underneath) and sorting out...

I have a Twisted Willow in a pot that needs a location too...

Sigh...

 

Yes - I think that's the one Clare! It's not flowering just yet - I'll try and get a photo when it does!

Claire

 

I've got an orange Buddleja in my garden probably x weyeriana very pretty plant usually attracts every cabbage white in a hundreed mile radius:o

 

I don't know why people don't like these. There are loads of different colours. I had a gorgeous really blue one which I lost and have never been able to track it down again. They are so easy. Just hack them down very hard in March give then a feed and you get massive blooms on arching stems come August. Loads of butterflies too. I rather like the blue/grey foliage in amongst the other foliage colours in the border.

 

I know what you mean =] I got a book out from the library a few months ago (can't remember the title but it was by the RHS and all about Buddleja:gnthb it was absolutley jam packed with all kinds of buddleja I never news there were so many