Beautiful Butterfly Bush Buddleia or flowering this week in my garden

In the heat of high Summer just a few things are not only bold enough to withstand the blast of these days but seem to revel in the heat; Buddleia, Oriental lilies, Shasta Daisy and the Agapanthus are blooming like showgirls on a day out in Vegas!

One of the important records I shall make in the garden this year is to have something beautiful and useful (to paraphrase William Morris) in the garden every week/month of the year and the most important of these is to have something thing for the bees, dragonflies, butterflies and ladybirds. The great thing about this is that almost all of these “useful” plants have wonderful scent for me too! Buddleia likes well-drained soil –even if it’s rocky dry and wretched and thrives in sunny spots. I recommend deadheading which will result in more flushes of flowers and the plants can get scrappy and leggy so a good hard prune back 60cm (one-two ft) or so from the base in late autumn. This is also when I strike cuttings and as I have very sandy soil where these are planted I simply prune and select some good sized cuttings about the size of my little finger and pop them in the ground – by next summer they should be leafy and even flowering.