Dapper® Pink Butterfly Bush

It’s a summer party for everyone when you grow the Dapper® Pink Butterfly Bush in your garden. Bright pink spikes of flowers guarantee color through summer and right into fall, and with its large, elegant spikes of flowers on a compact bush it’s as dapper as dapper can be. Butterflies and other pollinators will be clamoring to join the party too, lining up to drink the sweet nectar of this butterfly-magnet. The foliage is dark green, rather than the more common gray-green color, and fits well with other shrubs of all kinds. The large, pointed flower spikes are 6 inches long, packed with around 500 tiny blossoms that open from the bottom of the spike upwards as it elongates. Each blossom is a bright, tiny jewel of beautiful purple-pink, with an orange center. The bush spends spring filling out with its leathery, pointed leaves, and by early-summer – just when most gardens have finished their main period of blooms – the first flowers appear. These continue in abundance right into fall, until the first hard frost ends the party. A great plant for hot, sunny areas, in beds, rock gardens and open slopes, it tolerates poor soil and dry conditions perfectly.

• Abundant 6-inch spikes of bright pink blooms
• In flower throughout summer and fall
• compact bush, 3-4 feet tall and wide
• Bold, dark-green leaves make a perfect backdrop for the flowers
• Tolerant of heat, sun, and poor soils

Plant the Dapper® Pink Butterfly Bush in full sun, in any well-drained soil. It thrives in poor, sandy and rocky soils, yet it will even grow in clay, if it isn’t wet. Once established it has good tolerance of drought. It isn’t eaten by deer and is normally free of pests or diseases. Prune in spring, just as growth is beginning, removing thin twigs and shortening back the shoots to a pair of strong, healthy buds. Note that this plant is slow to appear in spring, so be patient. In colder zones it may be killed back to the ground, but it will resprout vigorously and flower abundantly by early summer.