That would be a no-brainer here :-) Unless one of the few sterile cultivars on the market (significantly smaller plants), they are highly invasive in my area and considered a noxious weed.

And for me, all buddleia are annuals..they never winter over.

^^ They've done great for me, I haven't yet had any problems over-wintering.

I think it may be a drainage issue during late winter, early spring...but no chance of invasiveness here :)

they were short lived.. usually winter die to the ground for me in livonia .... 15 miles from you ... back in the day .... you must have some prime micro climate going on next to the house and a/c ...

as such.. i wouldnt bother with trying to move them ... lot of work for low odds... imo .... i would just cut flush and apply stump killer .... aka round up ...

i THINK i recall .. many peeps saying they cut them to the ground every year.. and me snorting to myself thinking winter ma nature took care of that for me ... with no insult to the root mass.. they have vast potential for annual regrowth ....

i once mail ordered 10 or so tiny babes for cheap .... they had no sense of humor about the sand i deal with out here in tecumseh ... so i lost interest in the group ... [adrian is my zip code] ... work smart.. not hard .....

ken

Mxk3, it would really help if you attached your growing zone and area to your name. I can't recommend any Buddleia alternatives or give advice without knowing it. Same goes for you mazer if you're planning so many threads! I'm my area it's best to not cut back the butterfly bushes. They hold their foliage and continue to photosynthesize well into the winter. Cutting back these shrubs in the fall will rob them of energy. There are a lot of native shrubs that are just as much or even more fragrant.

^^?? mxk3's zone and area show up clearly for me - mxk3(Zone 5b SE MI)

That's interesting, it's not showing up for me. Sorry mxk3, I take it back. I wanted my butterfly bushes to self seed and waited in vain for the small cultivars before reallizing like Gardengal said, they are all sterile. I then bought the fertile larger cultivars. They aren't invasive here and they have only 1 or 2 vollunteers in a years time. Like a lot of others I suppose I also hang on to growing them for their sweet fragrance. They are great butterfly magnets, and I see no reason not to use them as long as butterfly host plants and some native pollinator flowers are used along with them. When the 3 plants that I now have die, I'm not going to be replacing them with more Buddleias. They are very short lived here and undependable, unpredictable.

mx is north suburban detroit ...

im south ann arbor rural ...

jay is chicago ...

zone is near equivalent .... as is winter .... but she has a bit of concrete jungle micro climate ...

it was interesting.. when i moved out of the greater metro detroit area ... and i figured out that ... cement and asphalt retained a lot of winter heat and sunshine.. leading to some lessening in night low temps ... aka micro climate ..

ken

Off with their heads!

Um...Ken...all that fresh air in Tecumseh is messing with your brain cells --> I moved a couple years ago to horseing around acres...

That's odd. I can see my zone and location quite clearly next to my user name.

Yeah, I noticed that locality issue. Very interesting about the concrete microclimate Ken. I think it raises my area by half a zone, from 5b to 6a. But I push it to 7a. Most of the time that doesn't pay off though lol. So unfortunatly I can't overwinter many coveted species like jasmine. :(

If they're not invasive in your area they can be hard pruned after flowering which prevents the sprawling twiggy mess they become if left alone.

Floral, they really don't behave here like they do in the UK! It's much dryer here and they don't get 14' high and sprawling like they do there. I've always been jealous of that fact, but the upside being that over here they aren't anywhere near as invasive as they are for you. My Buddleias would never get that huge. The constant deadheading of them to keep blooming continuous can get quite old though.

I doubt that dryness plays much of a factor on size......that is much more likely to be due to milder winters and lack of winter dieback.

Here in my area of the PNW, we are much drier than you might think - similar total annual rainfall as you get in Chicago but very dry in summer. We can go weeks with no measurable precipitation between late June and the end of September. Yet buddleias can grow massively here unless cut back - 15' or more is not uncommon. And that's because in my very mild winter climate, buddleias are true woody shrubs, not dieback perennials. In many cases they will retain at least some green foliage throughout the winter.

btw, butterfly bushes are reported to have naturalized in at least 20 states, so their invasive properties may not be far behind in areas where they have not been seen to display this characteristic......yet :-) And the sterile varieties appear to be just as attractive to pollinators as the hugely fertile selections :-)

I'm aware of their behaviour in different climates. I was just suggesting a method of avoiding the ungainly growth the OP was unhappy with. S/he stated they were too big and were weedy looking.

As GG said, it's winter cold that kills them not dryness. After all they're very happy growing out of walls and on derelict rooftops.

I say, if you like them, keep them! Or maybe, switch them out for other more desirable compact varieties. In my climate, buddleia are a real novelty that can only be grown outdoors in a location where the roots are protected from the sometimes penetrating bitter cold, such as tucked up against a buildings foundation. Alternatively, smaller growing specimens make for excellent container plants that can be held over winter in cold storage.

In ground buddleia zone 4

Here in the midwest they usually never reach 14'. Mxk3 what are you feeding yours? A miracle grow i.v. drip? ? I figured they might get huge in the psw. I've never seen them growing out of walls and rooftops anywhere in the states, has anyone?

Stone walls are less common here than they are in the UK, but the plants are commonly found here self-seeded and growing in the cracks of disused parking lots, old house foundations, in the gravel along the side of the road or railroad tracks and in gravel or sandbanks of local rivers and streams. Not at all fussy about soils :-)

I never said mine got 14 feet! Nah, they top out at around 5-6 feet, but they're gangly.

I guess they do get gangly even at that size. I'd forgotten, you see I moved to a new place but still kept the old garden, which is where my Buddleias reside. Needless to say I haven't kept up on the weeding and so for the past couple years or so my lovely sweet smelling butterfly bushes have been totally encapsulated inside a tangled mess of mutant morning glories lol! So I'd forgotten about cutting them back for shape because I've been more involved with excavating them lol. And they're not growing gangly, lack of sunlight lol.

Now I'm worried. I have black knight and to me it really doesn't stand out as particularly weedy or gangly, and now I'm wondering if it's because my whole garden is just one big weedy gangle-thon. Uh oh.

If you don't like them just get rid of them, or try them in an out of the way area. There are so many smaller, neater versions you shouldn't have to be stuck with a form you don't like.

The ones I don't like are the small ones. I think they look too lumpy. The white ones as well, to me they look dirty the minute the first flowers start to fade.

Tbh, I loathe the sods...but mostly because they are appallingly grown and left to flail around as huge ungainly thuggish wall destroyers (their seeds seem to survive everywhere). However, when stooled back hard every year, they grow like a hardy perennial, with many slender wands with single panicles...and can look terrific in a generous border with other stately late summer perennials (have seen a few stunning red/purple combos rocking this look). So, for me, as a lazy type, nope, not really...but with caveats. Not hardy for you mxk3, but the lovelier b.alternifolia would be on my list if I had spare wall space.

I was wondering where Jay got the 14 feet idea from, mxk3 since I couldn't see it in your posts.

A bit off topic, but I finally figured out the issue of visibility of location. If you are logged in via gardenweb.com, you can see location once you have loaded a thread, but anyone logged in via houzz.com cannot see the automatically loaded location info, even on the same thread. Try loading this thread from the two links below to see the difference. The auto loaded location info doesn’t show in the main forum list regardless, just in the threads.

[https://www.houzz.com/discussions/perennials-forum-dsbr0-bd~t_29989[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/perennials-forum-dsbr0-bd~t_29989-forum-dsbr0-bd~t_29989)

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/perennials

I ended up just making my location info part of my displayed name so anyone can see it regardless of how they arrived here.

I used to like them. Then I moved and my new neighbor offered some to me for FREE!! I was so excited, but, after I thought about it, I realized that they don't look very, I don't know, natural in my NJ woodland garden. So, I vote no.

I’ve removed all but one myself.

The constant deadheading to keep them blooming and pretty, just got to be too much.

I kept my original one and don’t mind deadheading just one, as it’s by my sitting area. It is very active with butterflies, bees, and hummingbird moths....a real treat!

The only one I ever lost was in a low lying area that held water.

ETA..here it is (1st on right) with Christmas lights so I get double pleasure from it :D

I got the 14' idea from looking at pictures of Buddleias in England. Maybe as always I exagerated, maybe they were 8 or 9 feet. I did grow the alternifolia once, it was gorgeous! Nice to know I'm not the only one who hates deadheading them. It wouldn't be so bad if the blooms lasted a longer, more reasonable amount of time. I'm thinking Buddleia seeds need darkness to germinate and that's perhaps the reason that I get very few vollunteers. I'm not really sure how to sign in to gardenweb. I can sign in to Houzz. Until I get it straightened out I won't be able to chastise anyone for not having their zones showing lol!

It never gets dark where you live???

Yeah, it gets dark here. My ancestors came here from Transylvania and I don't think I could handle sunlight 24/7 like it is at the polar icecaps lol. Not to mention you really can't grow anything up there lol. I just meant that only the few seeds that fall in dark places seem to germinate. I can just look it up now. You, being in an area that's infested might have anorher take on it. It doesn't seem like the sunlight is hindering them very much over there. lol How are those Impatiens glanduliferas and Herb Roberts doing? I've got seeds in dark places! :)

That darkness theory sounds off to me, although I haven't researched it As I said before Buddlejas grow out of rooftops here. Old chimneys, gutters, masonry, walls, sea cliffs. They grow in swathes along rail tracks and are a big expense to keep cut back. Definitely not dark places. And they do grow 14 feet or more. The seeds fly about on the wind. Personally I find alternifolia rather wimpy looking and the trees can be very twiggy. They can look ok hanging over a wall. I quite like globosa though, and weyeriana.

Jay, the way you get to gardenweb is you replace the word houzz in the URL up in the browser’s web address bar with gardenweb, leaving all else the same. Then if you navigate around the site from the Your Topics list over to the left, you will stay in Gardenweb. Or you can click the gardenweb link I gave you and then bookmark it so that is where you start in the future.

I don't believe Buddleias need darkness to germinate. Some seeds require it. The wet paper towel between 2 dinner plates treatment lol. Those shrubs really are slow to get going in the spring also. You have to continually water and fertilize them just to get them up to par every year. I'm ripping my last 3 out and turning that area into a nursery bed. There are a lot more dependable native pollinator plants that I can rely on. And that constant deadheading, good riddence!

I still find it amazing how many plants grow out of walls over there. It gives a whole new meaning to vertical gardening. I suspect gnomes are somehow involved lol!

What is involved is rain.

Rain + a seed + neglect is all it takes.

There are all kinds of plants, including trees and shrubs that are seen commonly growing out of walls around here, especially those walls built around sections of highway in the city. It doesn't just happen "over there". Any man-made structure can be overcome by plants. It even happens in the desert SW.

Garden ho---thats a nice photo with the yellow swallowtail.

Thank you Tex. Wish I could find my other pics with multiple butterflies feasting...

You might want to do away with these hard to keep up butterfly bushes, but there are 140 Buddleja species to choose from. There's the weeping Chinese species and some western north American native Buddlejas, and a bunch of strange ones like the globosa which is a parent of the sungold hybrids.

Buddleja colvilei

Buddleja alternifolia

Buddleja utahensis

Buddleja marrubiifolia

Buddleja globosa

Buddleja racemosa

Buddleja scordioides

Buddleja sessiliflora

Buddleja utahensis

Buddleja speciosissima

I had to laugh at the above googled types being considered candidates for "doing away with those hard to keep up butterfly bushes". You have googled a couple of desert species, one is a high altitude species than needs rocky soil which is considered challenging, one is a California plant, one from south Texas --- all but two are not hardy above zone 8 or 9 and one is tropical.

There's still 130 more options. lol. Some of those beautiful tropical ones might be worth a little trouble to grow. If you live in an area where the natives grow, you can grow them. The tropicals can be grown in warmer milder climates. I've grown the regular garden center cultivars and the B. alternifolia. I don't know anything about the other 138 species. If there were a Buddleja native to my area I'd be growing it. I'm still removing the two I have left to make a nursery bed. No plans for any more Buddleja species.

gardenho----Thanks for posting the other pictures you shot.

Other than a tendancy to self-seed around a bit I have few complaints with them here in my garden. They tend to be a relatively short lived plant and get corkey and attaacked by insect in the basal stems so they then go rapidly downhill. I let a few seedlings stay around, but all of the named varietal ones I had have long since passed on.

The nursery industry has already responded to concerns about size and seeds with multiple different dwarf and (supposedly) sterile forms or hybrids of Buddleja davidii. Just one wholesale grower alone offers at least several (along with some older, conventional varieties):

https://plants.monrovia.com/search?w=buddleja

A late friend that was surprised about how much he had to water his Seattle garden after moving here and buying a property went back to Chicago one August to visit relatives. Where he learned that they had had one inch per week of rain since May that season. Out here an entire July may pass by without an inch of rain having occurred. Except for certain outer coastal zones summer rain is not a significant factor on the Pacific Slope, with the Lower 48 consisting basically of a dry summer western half and a rainy summer eastern half - the annual precipitation curves of the two corners (Seattle and Miami) are exactly opposite one another. The talk about how rainy it is here is not based on summer conditions, with there having been a bumper sticker around in the past that read Seattle Rain Festival - November to May. We never get the copious summer downpours of the eastern states, where in the South in particular it may rain feet at a time.

So, yes: if a plant like butterfly bush is a noxious weed here in the Pacific Northwest this is not due to the presence of ample summer rainfall.