How To: Prune Butterfly Bushes

Welcome back guys, it's the Tightwad and I'm finally getting around to my winter pruning. This bush that we're looking at today is a butterfly bush and it's in a location in my yard that I don't want it to get too huge so I prune it back every year. I typically do this in late January, early February and as you can see it comes back beautifully. It has lots of blooms that come off every year regardless of how you prune it and the butterflies just love these bushes. They flock to them and this one actually has a really deep purple bloom and I will tag another video after it grows back out in the springtime. So I'm going to show you how to prune it today. There's not a whole lot of technicality to pruning these beautiful bushes. I just go down about six inches over last year's cut and start clipping. It comes off in long shoots that I haul off to the recycle center and I just work my way around the bush making a nice little ball. So when it comes out next year each of these shoots that I'm trimming typically comes off in two new shoots or one strong healthy shoot. It just depends on the temperament of your butterfly bush. Now you can see I have a long piece right here growing out of the bottom. I'm going to go ahead and cut that whole thing off. It looks like it's been growing for a couple of years but I have nice strong shears. So whatever you want to do to mold the shape of it for the following year to control the growth pattern you can do with this pruning. Again you won't hurt the bush. You can go ahead and prune it down as far as you want as long as I try to leave at least a foot sticking out of the ground. Some people really enjoy pruning. I like the actual cutting part. I hate the cleaning up part but it's a necessary thing to do when your plants are in restricted growth areas. Like I said with this one you can leave it if you want. You don't have to print it back to actually grow into really huge trees. The biggest ones I've seen have been about 20 feet in diameter 20 feet tall. So some people really enjoy the large ones. You can tell when there's dead growth on it. Things that don't have any leaves from the previous year. So this shoot had leaves whereas this shoot here didn't. Those are easy just to snap off with your hands as well to kind of clean them up a little bit make room for that new growth to come out. So I'm going to pull off some of that dead stuff from last year and I'll trim up these last couple and we'll be done. I've got a couple of briars growing in here. All right so I know it's a pretty thing right now but when spring comes out you'll be amazed at how quickly these come back out. And if you haven't done your pruning yet and you're getting into middle to late February the time is now. Always try to do it when the plants are dormant when your grass is dormant. That's usually a good indicator. Try not to do it too early in the fall because then a really hard frost could kill these fresh stems that I've cut. So late January early February if you're in the southeastern region is a great time. I hope you guys found this video helpful. If you have any questions leave them in the comment section below. Give me a thumbs up. Subscribe to my channel. I do lots of videos on pruning around the house lawn maintenance and as well as home repairs. So I hope you guys have a great day.