Having a little walk around a garden centre last Sunday, I could help but notice the many different buddleia in flower. I couldn't also help noticing the abundance of bees and butterflies.
Buddleia (or Buddleja) is renowned for its insect attracting charms, but it's also classed as a non-native invasive species that can do significant damage to buildings and other infrastructure.
The BBC reports on the problems faced by the UK rail networks.
"Network Rail says buddleia has a habit of growing in walls where it can interfere with overhead power lines and obscure signals. While it does not cause "serious" problems such as blocking train lines, it does have a habit of popping up in "annoying places" where removing it takes up valuable time and resource."
As a gardener I value the buddleia's contribution to any garden (ironically though, I don't have one).
How about you...do you put buddleia in the friend, or foe category?
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Freind.....the railways want it all ways...they cleared a lot of tress to cut down on "maintenance" and then wondered why all the embankments locally collapsed shutting the line for months..
They should be able to spot and deal with the odd Budlia if not we are in serious dodo ! We live on a living planet that grows stuff ! Understand it, live with it and deal with it, but don't then class everything that is in the way as invasive ?
It could be argued that we are a non native invasive species ;-)
Buddleia...love em, but I guess you kinda knew that from the tone of my post Lol
Mark
I truly distrust and despise Buddleja based on its intent and accuracy to ping me in the face when I'm trying to cut it back. It refuses to be squashed into garden bags neatly and clogs up my shredder. However the butterflies and bees love it, so who am I to argue?
I had a clearance last week, massive Buddleja to cut back, totally overgrown, 3-4 years worth. It was in full flower and every one covered in bees having a great old time. After a discussion with the client, we agreed to work around it and will cut back at the end of the season.
Great result! Well done Russell! Let's just hop you and the client can agree to something replacing it which will not utterly deprive those same bees and butterflies or their offspring.
Incidentally, I am agnostic when it comes to the pros and cons of various species of plant and flower. I would like to see more native species gven the job but wonder how practical that is given the damage we have done in that respect?
I like it, fits in well in a garden. but grows like stink though and a pain to cut back. I can see the rail networks problem as you do see them growing literally everywhere.
I have a nice one off commercial self-seeded Buddleia clearance to do "urgently as they're blocking the way" along the ramp running down to an underground car park in a Belfast office block. I last did them about 5 years ago, so looking forward to seeing how big they have let them grow before they started to panic.
I love them and so do most of my customers. I also like globosa and alternifolia.
There is a dwarf variety now available I believe.
I'm pleased to see that, on consensus, buddleia is our friend. I love buddleia:)
Stuart - I like globosa too but it does need a lot of space if grown to its full potential.
I like them, anything that's good for insects is welcome. They can get out of hand though if not pruned.
Just add here that we did everything safely and I'd like to state that I didn't go on the roof, I struggle to get on the first rung of a step ladder so there is no way on earth that I'll go up that high!
Mike Goodman said: