Taming the Buddleia

As the blooms of the Buddleia started to tickle the top of the bamboo on the other side of the garden it was clear the time had come to do something about it.

I'd been having trouble getting anything to grow under it anyway and half the lawn remained in perpetual shade, even at the height of the midday sun.

So out came the ladder and the shears. But it wasn't going to go without a fight. For a flowery shrub which had got a bit big for its boots and become a tree, it handed out a decent bit of punishment. By the end of my two hours of chopping and snapping I looked like I'd just been through ten rounds with the neighbourhood tomcat.

This is actually the wrong time to hard prune a buddleia - it is really supposed to be done in the spring before the new growth starts. But it was getting out of control, and the fact is this plant is essentially a good-looking weed which self seeds at the drop of a leaf so if I had killed it off, it wouldn't be the greatest botanical disaster known to man.

No turning back now, anyway - I've taken it back a good 5', which is as far as I could reach. The other bit is on the neighbour's side and seeing as she seems to be following the 'trim nothing, mow nothing' style of gardening, her half will be just fine.

My garden is once again bathed in daylight, and that bed is all set for the arrival of the tree ferns, which ought to be sometime next week.

Everyone's happy, except perhaps the butterflies.

Five Buddleia facts

• Native to northwestern China and Japan
• Introduced to the UK at the end of the 19th century
• The plant was named after the Reverend Adam Buddle who was a botanist and a rector in Essex, England
• 100 species, found across southern Asia, south and east Africa, America from Texas to Chile and Argentina, and Europe
• B.Davidii can grow in rocky places so flourishes on wasteland. Established itself on bomb sites after the Second World War