Beautiful illustration by Laura Ribbons

The buddleia are coming into flower now and Buddleja Lochinch is looking and smelling good. It has large pale purple spikes of flowers. We bought the plant several years ago after a trip to Warwick. We had found a small garden that you could visit that was very close to the castle there. There were two buddleias - Buddleja Lochinch and Buddleja davidii Black Knight. The contrast of the lighter purple flowers with the dark purple worked extremely well. I had a photograph of both of them with the castle in the background, but cannot find it!


Buddleja davidii Black Knight is not in flower yet in our garden and it has not grown quite so well. We also have the ubiquitous Buddleja davidii up on the bank. These seem to grow everywhere - on railway embankments, out of gutters and even out of chimneys. I do rather like them though. They were originally grown in China and first appeared in England in the 19th century. The bees and butterflies adore them, although never when you want to take a photograph.

This is Buddleja Lochinch - this plant is around 6 years old now and I try to remember to prune it hard each spring and then we usually get multiple flower heads. We also have a Buddleja White Bouquet which flowers slightly later in July. The flowers look like fireworks exploding out of the bush. The photo below was taken 2 years ago.