How to Care for Dwarf Butterfly Shrubs

Employ your dwarf butterfly bushes in groups, as they normally do not work well alone as a single specimen plant. Use them in cottage gardens, rose gardens, butterfly gardens and as perennial borders. The flowers make a fine addition to fresh-cut flower arrangements.

Select the dwarf forms of butterfly bushes for your landscape if you live in USDA hardiness zones 5 through 9. In colder regions, such as zones 5 and 6, these shrubs will die all the way to the ground when winter comes, then rejuvenate in the spring when warm weather returns. In warmer zones, dwarf butterfly shrubs lose their leaves, but grow them back in spring. Remove any stems early in the spring that were killed by winter conditions.

Choose a sunny location for your dwarf butterfly shrubs so they will produce more flowers and achieve a full form. In the shade, the bushes generate fewer flowers and take on what the Missouri Botanical Garden calls a “weedy” appearance, with sparse stems.

Place your dwarf butterfly bush in an area with fertile soil, for best results. The bush does well in a medium moisture site with good drainage, but butterfly bushes fail to thrive in spots where the ground stays wet.

Remove flowers once they finish blooming. This tends to precipitate additional flowers, allowing your dwarf butterfly bush to be attractive later into the growing season. By removing spent flowers, you also limit the number of seeds the butterfly bush may generate. These shrubs have a tendency to self-sow, notes the UConn Plant Database, so removing spent flowers prevents any unwanted development of these shrubs.