A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2004 how long for a butterfly bush to grow???

got 3 butterfly bushes this spring, that i orderd & they came in 4inch pots. i planted em between my pompas grasses. but since there so small right now, i dug a long bulb bed around em. was gonna put bulbs in as sort of a filler till my bushes grew,so now im wondering how long will it take em to grow? i figure i better ask before i put in bulbs, just in case their fast growers. i also herd they can die back?
any help would be great!.thanks

Yes, butterfly bushes can die back. Mine has been in the ground for 5 or six years and this past winter was the first time it didn't suffer significant dieback. Every year before this, I had just pruned back to the ground, as there wasn't a lot of live wood left, but this year I have 3 feet of growth that survived so I'm only lightly pruning out the small amount of dead stems. Another reason for pruning back is that you get more flowers on new growth and pruning to near ground level gives you more flowers lower on the plants without so much bare stem.
I think it would be okay to have the bulbs there as they would bloom before the leaves came out. anyway

thanks Terry,
your info helped i have such a bad habbit of getting a new plant & starting a project with it without finding all the info first , i cant wait till i get my first flowers from my butterfly bush!