Other Names:  Little Raspberry Butterfly Bush, Summer Lilac

Group/Class:  Butterfly Candy Collection

Brand:  Plant Development Services Inc

Description:

This vigorous, super compact, heat loving selection will attract many butterflies to your garden; large spikes of fragrant, ruby red blooms appear from spring to fall; stunning as an accent specimen or in a mass planting; great for containers

Ornamental Features

Butterfly Candy® Li'l Raspberry™ Butterfly Bush features showy panicles of fragrant ruby-red flowers with red overtones at the ends of the branches from late spring to mid fall. The flowers are excellent for cutting. It has green deciduous foliage. The narrow leaves do not develop any appreciable fall color.

Landscape Attributes

Butterfly Candy® Li'l Raspberry™ Butterfly Bush is a multi-stemmed deciduous shrub with a mounded form. Its average texture blends into the landscape, but can be balanced by one or two finer or coarser trees or shrubs for an effective composition.

This is a relatively low maintenance shrub, and is best pruned in late winter once the threat of extreme cold has passed. It is a good choice for attracting bees, butterflies and hummingbirds to your yard, but is not particularly attractive to deer who tend to leave it alone in favor of tastier treats. It has no significant negative characteristics.

Butterfly Candy® Li'l Raspberry™ Butterfly Bush is recommended for the following landscape applications;

• Mass Planting
• General Garden Use
• Container Planting

Planting & Growing

Butterfly Candy® Li'l Raspberry™ Butterfly Bush will grow to be about 24 inches tall at maturity extending to 3 feet tall with the flowers, with a spread of 3 feet. It has a low canopy. It grows at a fast rate, and under ideal conditions can be expected to live for approximately 20 years.

This shrub should only be grown in full sunlight. It is very adaptable to both dry and moist locations, and should do just fine under typical garden conditions. To help this plant achive its best flowering performance, periodically apply a flower-boosting fertilizer from early spring through into the active growing season. It is not particular as to soil type or pH, and is able to handle environmental salt. It is highly tolerant of urban pollution and will even thrive in inner city environments. Consider applying a thick mulch around the root zone over the growing season to conserve soil moisture. This is a selected variety of a species not originally from North America.

Butterfly Candy® Li'l Raspberry™ Butterfly Bush makes a fine choice for the outdoor landscape, but it is also well-suited for use in outdoor pots and containers. Because of its height, it is often used as a 'thriller' in the 'spiller-thriller-filler' container combination; plant it near the center of the pot, surrounded by smaller plants and those that spill over the edges. It is even sizeable enough that it can be grown alone in a suitable container. Note that when grown in a container, it may not perform exactly as indicated on the tag - this is to be expected. Also note that when growing plants in outdoor containers and baskets, they may require more frequent waterings than they would in the yard or garden.