The KSL Greenhouse Show’s plant of the week: Butterfly bush

Salt Lake City — The butterfly bush is a hardy shrub that can light up your yard with its purple, pink and white colored flowers while attracting pollinators at the same time.

The KSL Greenhouse Show hosts Taun Beddes and Maria Shilaos spoke about the shrub on Saturday and how to take care of it in Utah.

KSL NewsRadio edited the following transcript for brevity.

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Helps the pollinators

SHILAOS: “Butterfly bush is the plant of the week, and I love butterfly bush. The butterflies love it, it’s fragrant, it gets these beautiful flowers on it. What do we need to know about it?”

BEDDES: “Butterfly bush is, depending on the variety, relatively fast growing and relatively easy to establish, but it’s fairly water wise. You can put the shrub in your yard and it blooms the entire summer. It does attract pollinators, and especially butterflies, hence its name and so its a very beneficial shrub, not only for the beauty it provides but also the amount of, just the water wise nature and its friendly to pollinators.”

Make room for the shrub

SHILAOS: “You do need to give it some space though. You have to make room for it.”

BEDDES: “Well, the older varieties you do, because it would get anywhere from 8 to 12 feet high and wide. Now, there are a lot of dwarf varieties that would get anywhere from 2 to 3 feet. Another thing that you would do to keep the size down, is in mid-March you can go in with your shears or loppers and cut it down to about a third of its original size.”

Purple, pink, white varieties

SHILAOS: “I’ve seen purple, I’ve seen white, are there other colors as well?”

BEDDES: “Pink, those are the main ones. There are intermediate variations between all those. I’ve heard people say red, but it’s more of a kind of a red, purple color.”

Listen👇 to the full podcast episode

 

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