Although it’s not necessary to deadhead Proven Winners ColorChoice butterfly bushes, you can do it to give them a tidier appearance. For older varieties of butterfly bush, it can be helpful to deadhead them to keep them from dropping viable seeds and to help quicken or promote rebloom.
Why isn’t deadheading necessary? As you can see in this photo, there are spent flowers, mature flowers, and buds all growing next to each other. Proven Winners ColorChoice butterfly bushes keep producing flower buds even when they’re in full bloom.
We’ll show you how to deadhead a butterfly bush in this quick three-step process. Once you develop a good rhythm, you’ll find that the task goes quickly and the end results are quite satisfying.
Step One
Follow the stem of the spent flower down to a set of leaves. If you want the cut to blend in seamlessly, the second set is usually a good bet.
Step Two
Snip 1/4 to 1/8 of an inch above that set of leaves. Make a clean cut and avoid snipping any tender leaves.
Step Three
Clear away the flowers that have turned completely brown.
Before
After
With a few (or a few hundred, depending on how many flowers you have) quick snips your butterfly bushes will look tidy and ready to display a plentiful rebloom.
Have questions about your butterfly bush? Ask in the comments below.
4 Responses
My PW butterfly bush does not have many leaves on it and very few flowers. Last year it was beautiful! Does it need fertilizer! Please help! Thank you!
It could be a sunlight issue – feel free to email me with photos and more growing information! We can get to the bottom of this. 🙂 kristina@springmeadownursery.com
If you want to keep the bush smaller than it has become, could you follow the same practice lower on the branch with out risking blooms for the following year? or killing the bush?
It flowers on new wood, so no pruning should affect the next year. It’s hard to keep a large butterfly bush much, much smaller than it would prefer to be, so it might be best to transplant it to a place it can grow a bit bigger.