Butterfly heaven

If you want your garden to be filled with scent and butterflies this summer, plant a buddleja now, says Hazel Sillver, as she reveals varieties for large and small gardens

- Hazel Sillver

ON still, sunny days in high summer, buddleja bushes are always aflutter with butterflies. Peacock, red admiral, tortoiseshell and painted lady butterflies feed on the colourful panicles of flowers, which fill the air with honeyed scent. If you love butterflies, you can never have enough of these nectar powerhouses, and now is the time to plant them.

There are more than 100 species of buddleja, and they all hail from Asia, Africa or the Americas. In the wild, a few (such as B. cordata) grow into 80ft (25m) trees. But the majority are woody shrubs that grow in scrub or disturbed ground. We’re all familiar with seeing B. davidii on railway lines, and it is sometimes referred to as the ‘bomb-site plant’ because it sowed itself on the derelict sites of bombed buildings after the war.

Globular flowerheads

The most common name is, of course, ‘butterfly bush’. Varieties of B. davidii, such as ‘Royal Red’, are invaluable for their ability to attract butterflies, as well as their cheering colour. Bees also like B. davidii ‘Black Knight’, but – if given the choice – are more partial to the fabulous B. x weyeriana varieties, including ‘Honeycomb’ (gold) and ‘Moonlight’ (cream, orange, and lilac), which have globular flowerheads.

B. x weyeriana and B. davidii are great for the small garden because they can be cut back hard every spring. However, some forms are only suitable for large gardens, such as B. globosa (which has spherical orange flowerheads) because it doesn’t like having a haircut and therefore needs to be allowed to grow into a giant. The same applies to B. alternifolia, which doesn’t like to be hard pruned.

Compact forms