I have lots of leaves on my BB and roses too. Also oakleaf hydrangea has leaves. Also daphne 'Carol Mckie' (known to be a late dropper). My pansies are still mildly blooming. Geraniums and coral bells are looking good, but they are semi-evergreen here anyhow, so that probably doesn't count. Its been a very mild Nov/Dec so far. I love it! Although these oddities sometimes confuse our plants, they will compensate. I heard some crocuses are coming up. And someone I know mowed their grass recently!

Ken - yeah, lawn-moving is not a big chore here :-) DH uses a reel mower and it takes 15-20 minutes or so - mainly because of the ditch in the front yard and slopes at the sides adjoining the neighbours' driveways slows him down a bit :-) We've pretty much gardened every available inch! Even the remaining grass is part of the garden by being shaped grassy paths, and the ditch has spring bulbs in the grass. We grow veggies in pots on the driveway so the driveway is part of the garden too.... This is a view of the house from the road in early August last year: This one shows the 'moat bed' (narrow bed along the top of the ditch) at its showiest at the end of May 2013. Sadly, the brutal winter just past killed off the wisteria flowerbuds so no spring display this year :-( The clematis 'Henryi' that grows into the Chinese wisteria is doing well though - once it blooms we will cut the Chinese wisteria back a bit to remove deadwood and encourage a good secondary summer bloom. We miss the wisteria display! Rouge - it's going to be a year or two before we can tell if the haskap experiment will be successful but I'm sure I'll have something to say about it whatever happens! And you're right, making changes in established plantings is exciting. I've been making smaller changes and will continue to do that, but removing the BB is the first really obvious big one - a lot of neighbours have noticed and asked about it!

It's probably another plant. A few years ago we purchased several tropical milkweed plants from a local nursery. As the plants grew, I noticed that there were some leaves on several of the plants that my Monarch cats would not eat. I didn't think much about it until the next season. The strange leaves were growing faster and bushier than the normal leaves that I really needed to grow. Then one day, I noticed a bloom on one of the stems and it sure wasn't a milkweed bloom. After a little research, I found out the plants growing with the milkweed were Mexican Petunias. Once my Monarchs were gone, I dug up 3 or 4 milkweed plants to get the Mexican petunias out of there. Those things grow like mad and were taking over. The roots were a tangled mess and it took some time to get them apart. We now have a small patch of Mexican petunias growing in another area. They're actually kind of pretty. I can't tell from your pics what's growing in your butterfly bush. Like us, it sounds like you got 2 for one. Hope it turns out to be something you like. I look forward to seeing a picture of the blooms in the near future. Good luck!

'Lochinch' is a hybrid rather than a pure Buddleja davidii. The general behavior is for trees and shrubs to store energy in both stems and roots. With roses in particular, since these are cane growers that renew from a bud head, if there was any kind of shrub that stored nutrients more in the roots than in the stems it would be a one like this. Another cane grower, Himalayan blackberry is supposed to be sprayed with glyphosate in the fall because nutrients in the canes are being sent down to the bud head at that time. The herbicide taken in through the leaves is expected to join the procession and concentrate in the bud head, killing the initials for next year's new canes. What is supposed to be wrong with hard pruning of shrubs that may die back in winter is that the frost damage starts at the ends of the stems. The thinking is that the longer the stems during a dying back episode, the more stem will be left afterward. Unless people living in Asian hinterlands have been making USDA Hardiness Zone assignments the one used here in the US for butterfly bush is based on experience with it cultivation, on this continent. Other Garden Web chatter has tended to settle on it becoming marginal in USDA 6 (back East).