Buddleia
It’s not at all surprising that the Buddleia plant is more commonly known as the Butterfly bush. Just hang around and watch it for a few minutes when it’s in full bloom in the summer and you will be amazed by the amount of insect visitors that visit this bush – butterflies, bees, hoverflies and various other insects if you just look closely. Not only is a wonderful feeding station but also looks stunning your garden.
Buddleia
There are so many different varieties of Buddleia. You can find more information about the actual plant and its history here on Wikipeadia. It’s certainly a very hardy plant and will tolerate most soils and most weather conditions. I think the variety we have here in our garden is the Buddleia Empire blue. Not only does it look magnificent in the garden, but get close and the smell is intoxicating. No wonder it attracts the insects.
Don’t be afraid to prune the bush. We normally prune the bush to about 3-4 good shoots above the ground in the early winter, this hard pruning stops the bush from being too straggly and growing too big. Others prefer to prune in early spring, but we like to put the garden to bed for the winter as much as possible pruning and mulching as we go.
Buddleia image
Although it was a warm day here in my corner of Essex today it was rather windy. The branches of the Buddleia bush were really swaying in the wind but I managed to capture an image of a Red Admiral feeding on the tiny, numerous flowers. For a lager version of the photo you can find it on my Flickr photostream.
