Buddleia and Researching Planting Times

Butterflies. Where I live, they seem to be gone for the season. The cool weather hasn’t exactly arrived yet, but it won’t be long before it does. And the Monarchs and Painted Ladies have gotten their signal that a change in temperatures is on the way. 

I love attracting butterflies to the garden in spring and summer. Who doesn’t? Buddliea, the Butterfly Bush, attracts them unfailingly, beckoning the winged ones with fragrant, elongated flower cones. I have a dark purple-flowering Butterfly Bush now, but I have also had Buddleia shrubs that flowered in a tone that was closer to magenta, and one that had multi-colored blooms (pink, purple, and magenta).

How late is too late in autumn to plant a Buddleia, such as the well-bred and petite Buddleia ‘Pugster Blue’? If you live in a warmer region, you know that you have free rein to plant whenever you please. But in zones 5 or 6, for example, planting now will require some research and weather watching. The Old Farmer’s Almanac? Yes, this surely helps in figuring out when the first freeze is likely to be. And there are plenty of other sources of information, as well.

I still think of The Old Farmer’s Almanac with its buttery yellow cover and densely text-filled pages to flip through to gather information. (I guess that makes me an old farmer.) But taken into this new day of quick computer searches, www.almanac.com/gardening/frostdates makes the search for predicted first and last frost dates even easier. Nostalgia aside, I plug in the URL, add my zip code, and see if there’s time enough to add a new shrub or a few perennials, and when to plant my spring-flowering bulbs. 

Buddleia? For me, it’s too late in the season to plant Buddleia ‘Pugster Blue’ or any other Buddleia variety. Although today was balmy, and tomorrow looks as though it might be similar, a hard freeze is due quite soon (confirmed by the Almanac), and this won’t allow enough time for the roots of Buddleia to take hold. But my bulbs… well, I think I will wait a bit to get those in the ground. They do best when placed in cold soil at the time of planting, and I don’t want them to get tricked into sending up green shoots in autumn… not the worst fate, as that greenery dies back when frost does hit and usually appears in spring, just fine… but not the best timing either. Timing is everything, and using research tools to inform the timing of tasks is important.

The National Gardening Association has a frost dates calculator that is easy to use. Check out their website, searching for them by name and with the add-on search term of “frost dates”. You’ll find great information on when your area is likely to reach one temperature, and then when it will dip lower and lower. The site also shares the probabilities of getting to each temperature by different dates. (Again, too late for me to plant Buddleia… but for you… maybe not.) And college and university extension schools/offices often provide similar information for the regions in which they are located, posting it on the Web for convenience. Lots of information out there… and it’s easier than ever to access.

I often wonder what it would be have been like to have access to so much information on the Web when I was a student—a time even before home computers. But I don’t have to wonder what being a student of the garden, gardening, and plants feels like in the Internet-informed era. Sure, I missed out on doing coursework with the Internet ready to open up the world to me, to inform, to tutor… but my gardening work benefits daily from Internet searches, not just on frost dates but on soil types, sun requirements, fertilizing needs… you name it.

The butterflies have gotten their signal… fall weather, on the way. And my signals about how much planting time I have left this year, and for which plants, have also sounded by way of a few great sites on the Web. You do your own research. You may still be able to plant Buddleia; your frost dates may be different. Just stay informed; stay interested. It pays off for gardening, and for keeping an active mind, as well.