Boy do I feel dumb. My husband & I have been watching this monarch eat our butterfly bush & didn't realize that we have a milkweed growing with our butterfly bush. I didn't plant it there! They are both in the same container. Of course the monarch is eating the milkweed, not the butterfly bush. Thanks everyone for responding to my post, I do feel dumb! Becky Image link:

Here is a video of a Monarch butterfly in my garden. Here is a link that might be useful: Monarch Butterfly

I will get out and snap pics later. I know I have 'Black Knight' in the butterfly garden although the flowers never seem quite as dark as they appear in the catalogs - it is always blooming in such hot direct sun, it seems to deepen toward the end of the season. That one is perhaps as tall as me - 66" or so. And then I have a very large white - it is tall well over my head at 7' I'd say I believe it is 'White Profusion'. I know for sure I bought 'Nanjo Blue' and for a time and it was lower growing although it seemed to get very wide and the flowers weren't very bright - I thought I transplanted it out to my island bed and that one is blue but it gets much taller now. Maybe I replaced it and forgot... The one that interests me a lot is 'Dartmoor' that gets clusters of flowers - I wonder if they all age at the same rate? This site shows the English Butterfly series that really are supposed to be compact. 'Peacock' looks very nice. And how about those variagated ones like 'Santana' - although it gets quite tall. I did have 'Honeycomb' at one time - it just never thrived for me like the others, may have been the location. Here's anice site located really close to where I lived in Akron, Ohio with a good selection... Here is a link that might be useful: Dayton Nursery Buddlea Varieties

I just went out an saw mostly earwigs and Japanese beetles all over the bushes that are being the most skeletonized. Must have caught it at the right time. I'm interested in ways to help control these that won't be overly harmful to other species that would use this type of bush. I've heard diatomaceous earth can be useful for earwigs, and we certainly have an infestation in and around our house. But that can harm anything that crawls on the ground with a carapace, correct? And Japanese beetles fly, so that won't help. Any suggestions? Rhizo_1: The plants have only been there 2-3 years, and damage occurred last year and again this year. If I don't find a safe and effective way of managing it, I may consider removing the one species that is especially bad. This post was edited by andyashton on Sat, Jul 13, 13 at 21:37