Is This Lowe’s Butterfly Bush Sterile?

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]What is happening plant people? So today we are at the Lowe's in Ozark and I haven't been here all season long. I'm loving what I'm seeing. Let me flip you around.

[00:00:14]It's pretty busy. I didn't get here until late because Titus and I were playing some video games. I got sucked into that. But ADHD, right?

[00:00:22]Look at this.

[00:00:27]We're not even inside yet. And I'm already falling in love.

[00:00:39]Give me a break.

[00:00:41]Does anybody else just get like giddy like a school girl when the season started?

[00:00:49]Oh man, I'm digging it. Okay, so I was kind of walking through here and just seeing some cool stuff that I wanted to that I wanted to talk about, but I've got to be cognizant of you guys' time and I don't want to scare off any new people. And I saw these arborvata. Now, I've been doing some research on deer resistant in my area. Deer are a huge problem because Missouri is vast and filled with corn and soybean fields and lots of natural undisturbed forests. So, there's a lot of place for deer to hide. They just kind of live in our neighborhoods and like bed down in our maiden grass. In one of the articles I was reading, they were doing testing on say emerald arborvita, which is this guy right here, versus these yellow cultivars.

[00:01:38]very very similar. If you put them right next to each other, you can almost when it comes to foliage.

[00:01:44]Obviously, there's a color contrast.

[00:01:46]They look very very like almost identical except for color, right? So, this is an emerald, not deer resistant at all. But what they were showing is that deer were less frequently browsing on these yellow versions of this arborva. Just thought it was interesting to point out. This is the highlights TM.

[00:02:18]So there's still a still a patent on it, but it only gets 8 to 10 feet tall. And then what does it say? Wide. 3 to four feet wide.

[00:02:28]If you had a deer problem, it might be worth going ahead and trying one of these and seeing what happens. Okay, the price is $87.

[00:02:41]It's full retail. Oh, there's another issue I have with these. And if I stood on the pot, comes comes to about nipple height and I'm six foot tall. So, let's just say three, three and a half feet, maybe a little bit more, maybe closer to four.

[00:03:04]My main issue with this group right here is that it's field potted. Now, if you're new to the channel or you haven't seen a lot of the content from last year, I go into this in in detail, but I'll give you just a quick quick little synopsis here. Field potted are filled with top soil, right? So they're growing these arborvata out in a big long row. It's been 10 years. They come in with some sort of a modified spade right on either a skid steer or a tractor. They pop it out and it's the exact size of a 10gon pot or a number 10 and they just drop it in the pot and then somebody kind of straightens it up and cleans it up and pops around the outside and then they throw it on a trailer and it goes to their holding area.

[00:03:52]They're going to be very very heavy.

[00:03:55]Now, there's no real benefit to a field pot, like a field potted arborvvada versus a bald and burlaped arborvvada. It's pretty much the same process. They just pop it out and they set it into a a cage that's already been pre- burlaped and then somebody wraps it all up and ties it up real good.

[00:04:19]The advantage for whoever is staging the product to then sell it like Lowe's is that they don't blow over, right? So, if it was pot grown, like it was grown in that pot or grown in a smaller pot, bumped grown into that pot, bumped again, it's a lot lighter, right? Because potting soil isn't as dense. Its sole purpose is to be nice and fluffy. So that's the key to field potted. So just know that if you're a single lady out there, welcome.

[00:05:01]But more importantly, it's going to be a lot more difficult to handle one of these, right? You're going to have to maybe make some make some concessions. Bring the wheelbarrow closer to the back of the vehicle.

[00:05:15]maybe bribe a teenager with some pizza to help you, you know, dig the, you know, get it into the hole. A lot of times they don't hold up as well when you pull them out, right? Because there's a lot more weight onto that root ball. So, you got to be careful when you pull it out. Where something like this pot grown, right, it's just it's super super light because it was clearly pot grown. And you can see in the potting soil. So, I'm going to flip you guys around real quick. I'm going to show you this potting soil.

[00:05:45]And I want to apologize for anybody that's seen this before.

[00:05:50]Okay.

[00:05:51]So, look right versus let's look at this guy here.

[00:06:06]See, this is just this is just top soil.

[00:06:11]Okay? So, you kind of get it. We won't spend very much time on that, but that's that's the rub. If you're not familiar with that, that's a thing that happens.

[00:06:20]And it's pretty inexpensive. It takes a little less labor to do it like that.

[00:06:24]You're dealing you're relying more on machinery than you are, you know, actually hands in there to stand stuff back up, tie stuff to lines, you know, do all that jazz that you got to do with pot grown things.

[00:06:35]So, really pretty. Here's a really pretty Rosa Sharon. I don't know how I missed this beauty.

[00:06:42]This is Chateau Dshamboard.

[00:06:52]Chateau Dsham board.

[00:06:55]Get six feet tall, four feet wide. And this one is in a number five and it's $73.

[00:07:03]So I think relatively manageable for a Rosa Sharon. Now, they do have a tendency to sucker in my area or put out runners and kind of pop up.

[00:07:16]Very pretty. Very pretty. Good through five through nine, but yeah, I like that.

[00:07:24]No smell.

[00:07:28]I don't know. We can handle that not having to smell, right? But that was a very good looking roast sharing. You can see it from here.

[00:07:37]>> Yeah.

[00:07:38]All right. All right. There's some cool grasses. Look like a heavy metal.

[00:07:44]Heavy metal blue switchgrass in a 5gallon Monrovia. Well, this one's heavy. I'm wondering.

[00:07:54]No, it must have just must have just been watered. Look how pretty this thing is. Let me fling you around.

[00:08:03]Look at that guy.

[00:08:05]I do like heavy metal.

[00:08:09]I think I like switchgrass in general.

[00:08:11]Very pretty.

[00:08:13]Very pretty. And then right next to it, there's like a North Pole.

[00:08:19]Look at this.

[00:08:22]Look how stately that looks. I'm a fan.

[00:08:26]What do we got here?

[00:08:30]Fosters feathered grass.

[00:08:35]That's Australian for grass.

[00:08:38]Six feet tall, two feet wide, and let's see a zone. Good. All the way down to zone four.

[00:08:46]I like it.

[00:08:48]All the way up to nine.

[00:08:52]Yeah, those are sharp. So anyway, this Fosters feather regrass is 68 even full retail, but it's it's in a number five or what we would call a 5 gallon, but it's not actually 5 gallons. I think it's 3.1 or something like that. Uh and then this guy right here, same price.

[00:09:15]This heavy metal was 68. Um, I don't buy a whole lot of grasses in 5gallon pots.

[00:09:22]Just weren't available at mom and pop places. Heavy metal I don't necessarily think is patented anymore.

[00:09:32]So, you can find them in threes and I would pay between 25 and 30 bucks for one if I was paying full retail for them. That's I feel like that would be a fair price.

[00:09:45]There is just so much going on out here.

[00:09:47]We need to go inside because that's where the clearance rack is. But, uh, it's really, really busy. So, let's try to navigate through there and take a look.

[00:09:58]All right. I'm going to cut you guys off for a second so I can navigate.

[00:10:03]Okay. So, I didn't make it very far.

[00:10:05]Right by the entrance as I was walking in, I saw some butterfly bush.

[00:10:13]And I thought I hit record, but I didn't. Then I realized I didn't hit record. So, here we are. So, I moved away because this is pretty busy and I don't want to I don't know, you know, when you got a camera and whatever. I don't want to deal with that. So, I brought these over into the parking lot and I wanted to show you these two butterfly bush. Now, this is something that we've had comments about and we've discussed in comments, but I wanted to make a more outright conversation for everybody to witness.

[00:10:43]So this is butterfly bush and in a lot of parts of the country especially on the west coast like northwest um these are considered invasive.

[00:10:52]Here in zone 6 it really can't get a foothold. We have a hard time with butterfly bush lasting season after season. Now I know some people in this area are like oh my butterfly bush has been coming back for seven years. I get it. But consistently, it's just really difficult. It's going to it's going to be very difficult for it to create a foothold situation here because we have such crazy winters. I was here when it was -21. So, we we we don't necessarily play in our winters, but it's hit or miss how cold our winters are going to get and for how long. So, I target sterile varieties, okay? Okay. And I do not trust a butterfly bush unless it says that it's sterile. This one right here, if we can read this tag together, it just says rooted brilliance boulia.

[00:11:53]Okay, so I get it. You want to get knee deep in that budlia, but we have to be somewhat stewards in the sense that there's nothing on this tag that tells me it's sterile. So then I start jumping into onto the internet and I start trying to look. Now this is a who's the name of the dwarde dwar.com.

[00:12:23]for more plant information. You go to the website, it still doesn't actually say it's sterile. So, here's the rub. If it's a sterile or non-invasive variety of butterfly bush, that's a boon for the butterfly bush. You would want to put that on your tag. The fact that it doesn't say it even on the website tells me that's that's probably not a good sign.

[00:12:50]So, I'm going to treat this as non-sterile. I'm going to treat this as an invasive butterfly bush. Now, this one's actually really cool. Only gets two and a half feet wide, two feet tall.

[00:13:00]So, a super dwarf. You read about it on the Monrovio. Uh, no, not the Monrovia.

[00:13:06]This was that was this other one here.

[00:13:09]So, let's go to that one. Okay, so this one doesn't actually say anything, right? It just says that it's a butterfly bush.

[00:13:18]And Rooted Brilliance is a series like um uh Southern Living or something like that, you know, it's like a series. This one here actually has a botanical name.

[00:13:31]So this one is called Rooted Brilliance, right? Little rock stars pink bodlia. So then I can go in and I can go to the website and I can start looking. Now this one actually popped up on because now it's not a mystery anymore. I know it's Little Rock Stars pink bodlia. So I can go and look at the Monrovia website and start digging around in the websites and looking specifically for butterfly bush that to see if it says sterile on the on the website. Now this one doesn't say it's sterile.

[00:14:10]Other butterfly bush on the Monrovia website say that they're sterile.

[00:14:16]So when it comes to a sterility issue, if you're asking if something is invasive or not, butterfly bush as a whole, we can't use absolutes and say are invasive because they're not invasive in places that it gets real cold, right? We might treat it as a bianual here or three years basically in year four it is not coming back.

[00:14:45]This one in particular, it was easy to track because it's got a name to it. And then um it also has a botanical name and a patent number. All right. Now, this one 20 in tall, 20 in wide. So, again, very dwarf, probably very container friendly. And in a colder part of the country, there's not a whole lot of of risk to taking a a butterfly bush like these home, but we can't guarantee that it's going to be seedless or it's going to be be sterile.

[00:15:17]Okay, I just wanted to throw that out there. There's Oh, make no this was not one that I found on the Monrovia website. I'm crazy. Um, that was another butterfly bush over here. We'll go we'll go talk about that one for a second. But that's that's the rub with these. Don't get if it's not like it's going to accidentally be be sterile and they just didn't let us know about it. It they are going to if you do a little bit of research they are going to tell you and you can just just use your voice on Google.

[00:15:55]Just say, "Hey, Google, is this butterfly bush sterile?" and then read it. Or you can use chat g chat gpt if you're so inclined to do something like that.

[00:16:06]It's very fast. Uh I found that chat gpt gives you a lot of information. So sometimes in the sun, it's difficult to read that. But I'm going to go put these back. Obviously, I'm not going to get them because they're, you know, they're not sterile.

[00:16:20]But look for that claim. sterility, nonseed bearing, non-invasive if it's because that's important to a lot of people. So, they're going to put that on the tags rotator cuff.

[00:16:39]All right, there's a cool variety. So, let's go track down those other butterfly bush that I saw over here.

[00:16:54]I'm lost again. It's my natural state.

[00:16:59]Okay, here we go. Here we go.

[00:17:03]Okay, so this guy here, I didn't want this to be a well, I don't care if we devolve into a or evolve, however we want to say it, into a butterfly bush video, but this one is called True Blue.

[00:17:19]by Monrovia. True blue butterfly bush.

[00:17:22]Now I've got a name, right? So I flip it around and I look. This is one of them big boys. So this is the one that's really scary to people, right? The big ones, the ones that get 6x6.

[00:17:36]>> Now this says it's hardy zone five.

[00:17:44]If that's the case, then now we're dipping into area. So, it's good to negative 20. We're dipping into an area where it could be invasive in my zone if we go by the tag. Now, obviously, if you have a very wet winters, if you have a lot of uh snowfall, snow will insulate, but it'll keep that soil really moist as it melts.

[00:18:07]A lot of times, butterfly bush are going to suffer from root rot in those kind of environments. So, so now you start looking up true blue butterfly bush. Good place to do that is the Monrovia website. So, you go on the Monrovia website. Other butterfly bush are saying that they're sterile, right? So, it's saying seedless sterile variety on the same website. Just go to this one. Doesn't say anything about that. So again, it's a boon for it to be sterile. That's important for a lot of us that the butterfly bush is sterile, especially when it starts getting a negative negative stigma stigma if it's earned or not. I'm going to start paying attention to that sort of stuff, that awareness.

[00:18:56]No mention, no mention at all if it's sterile or not. So, that's kind of that's kind of where we're at with the butterfly bush that I've seen so far. I think it's might be fun to go see what's on the clearance rack. So, let's go over there and let's do that.

[00:19:17]Oh, here's some chased chased tree.

[00:19:24]Don't tell anybody. I'm so strong. I'm like Samson from the Bible. Okay.

[00:19:30]Look how pretty that is. These just have so much character. I'm a big fan. Now, this one is $50. $50 and it's in a two gallon. So, you must really have to love this bad boy. And it is just a generic chase tree. So, not a named variety, not patented. you're just getting that attention to detail that Monrovia brings to the table when they grow plants. So, that's kind of the rub with that one.

[00:20:02]Seems a little seems a little pricey to me, but we've talked about this on other videos. When gas prices go up, plant prices go up because they don't teleport. We don't have the technology yet to teleport plants to Lowe's. They have to bring them via semi. So when price goes up, it's usually relation to gas. I remember when gas was crazy. We were paying six grand to bring a truck to the nursery. It was a full semi. You took that whole dog on thing, too.

[00:20:35]All right.

[00:20:37]I am just looking at this. This is a Spartan juniper. You can see a three tier Spartan juniper.

[00:20:49]very pretty. Can handle a little bit of shade. I wouldn't get too crazy with it.

[00:20:53]I definitely pay attention to evergreens in our area around June. Sometimes if you've had bag worms in the past, you kind of might want to spray them.

[00:21:04]When the bag worms are nice and little and easy to kill, that's when you want to that's when you want to spray for bag worms. So, Hardy all the way down to zone 4.

[00:21:16]$300 for this bad boy. But it's pretty.

[00:21:21]There's nothing wrong. It's in a number 10.

[00:21:25]Nothing wrong with it. Not a bit. I don't even know why it would be here other than its price point. It's kind of scared some folks off and it's been here too long, but it looks amazing. It looks great. So, being that it's on clearance, it's going to be 50% off because it's, you know, way past that the matrix that would give it a 50% off price point. So, you could get one of these for 150, which would be nice. Very easy to train.

[00:21:54]I like to just kind of roll these edges here. I just kind of like to make a nice little ball. That way everything gets light.

[00:22:03]Because a lot of times if you square things up, if you square up that top, then it doesn't get light on the bottom side. So you kind of want to place it to where you're going to get light all the way around. So it'll maintain all of its foliage. Uh three- tier poodle. Pretty pretty. Got some double knockout roses over here in a two gallon pot. Normally 22.98.

[00:22:30]Why am I looking at the back? Like I haven't planted 1,000 knockout roses. So 22.98 is going to take us to the 50% off. So anything over $15 is going to be 50% off.

[00:22:44]You feel real bad when it says 14.99.

[00:22:47]It's not 50% off. But uh but yeah, I mean that's a pretty good p price. $150 for something like that.

[00:22:55]Let's pull it out so you can take a look. Um, if I see black spot on a knockout rose, it doesn't really usually that maybe that's something that happens in the spring. If I see rose rosette, um, I immediately go and tell the staff that they need to throw that in the garbage along with every other rose that's in the um, recent vicinity.

[00:23:20]That's my suggestion anyway because that's not something you want to send home to somebody and ruin all of their roses. So, when you're pruning roses, um it's probably a good idea to just stabil sterilize your pruners. Uh I use rubbing alcohol in a sprayer.

[00:23:39]>> You just spray them down. It's okay.

[00:23:41]Wiping them wipe them on your pants.

[00:23:44]That's that's something you can do. So, they've got some tropicals here that are on clearance, but I'm not really interested in those. What I am interested is something I just saw, and it was hard not to jump on it, is this cast iron plant. So, if you watch the video where I was kind of building that hosta bed, not everyone watched it, not everyone's interested in work. It's It's okay. I get it. You like the Lowe's stuff, we're here at Lowe's. But just to catch you up, I did a video talking about a hosta farm that I was wanting to kind of grow my own hostas at the hospital and do some more sustainable hosta farming than just going and buying them every single time we got a new project. I want to start separating them and kind of growing on our own with beneficial fungus, beneficial bacteria, agroform tabs, that sort of thing. So, somebody recommended that I use a cast iron plant. And I don't know, they're zone six. I don't know if that's going because we dip we dip in a protected area in one of those overhangs.

[00:24:51]It's not getting hit by a whole lot of wind.

[00:24:55]This might be worth a try.

[00:24:58]Now, these are normally, this isn't a two gallon pot. These normally 42.98.

[00:25:04]So for a two gallon, that's pretty expensive. That's kind of hard for me to to swallow.

[00:25:13]Even at 2150 for a two gallon. I mean, I'm not buying a Monrovia Hellaore or anything, which I did get a bunch of those. They weren't Monrovia, but I got a bunch more Hellaore because you guys are telling me that I need more Hellaore. And I'm like, you're right.

[00:25:30]That's something I can cultivate, something I can can plant. So, I do have a video on that, but it's not really going to be too much fun because we're not walking around a nursery looking at plants. It's just me, hey, look at all these plants I bought kind of situation.

[00:25:42]So, let me know if that's something you want to watch.

[00:25:46]I don't know. I don't know if that's I don't know.

[00:25:51]Uh, these are pretty fun. These little garden tiles, we've talked about them before.

[00:25:59]Probably just got too much water. So, it's just got a ton of different sedum in here. And the great thing about this is if you got enough sun, you can just kind of cut these cut these into cracks into your walkway. I think that's a really fun thing to do with these garden tiles. Now, they're normally 21.98, but you're not getting a whole lot of viable sedum out of this bad boy. But good thing sedum grows really, really well. So, they got three of them. Two of them look really good. That one I just had in my hand doesn't look spectacular.

[00:26:32]But for 11 for 1150 or for 1050 or for 1075, see how I had to work through the math on. I'm a I'm an idiot. So that's not necessarily that bad of a price. Full sun.

[00:26:52]>> You would want to have full sun. Um, this variegated sweet flag. It must be looking bad at every Lowe's because last time we were at the Lowe's on Primrose, we saw that this variegated sweet flag, they had a bunch of that there. And then we have these Asiatic liies. This is called tiny ink. See that? Look at that.

[00:27:11]That's pretty. That is pretty. Very gives me a Asiatic lily kind of like ink. Those ink blot Very pretty and good all the way down to negative -30. So -40 hardiness -30 to -40. So yeah, most of us are going to be good. I mean, I guess if you live in Antarctica, there's probably not a whole lot of Asiatic liies, so you're not used to growing those.

[00:27:44]They got a bunch of them up here. Now, normally $11.98. $11.98 takes us to $7 a piece.

[00:27:53]Fun fact, all those Asiatic liies that I put into Miss Sharon's yard, all of those came back. They're very pretty.

[00:28:01]So, remind me, I've got to do a I've got to do an update for the neighbor's yard.

[00:28:10]But that's about it. That's about it.

[00:28:13]It's Hopefully, this is a dwarf for Cynthia.

[00:28:17]Nope.

[00:28:18]Five feet. I wouldn't consider five feet a dwarf.

[00:28:27]It is >> busier than when I normally come here, which is 7:00 7:30 somewhere around there.

[00:28:34]But we're having a good time. I'm enjoying hanging out with you guys and doing this.

[00:28:40]I don't know if there's a whole lot more we can talk to. They do they are having a sale right now.

[00:28:50]two for 10 on these perennials here. So, black pot perennials, right? So, grown specifically for Lowe's.

[00:29:01]Glardia is really pretty.

[00:29:03]And I got all excited because I saw two for 10. Now, you remember three for 10?

[00:29:08]You remember the good old days when we got three for 10?

[00:29:12]Those days are over. Well, probably not over, but we're going to have to get gas prices back where they they used to be. So, we can get back to three for 10, which I didn't see last year. Did we? Did we see them last year? I can't remember. But anyway, these are Powow White.

[00:29:30]Not the bestselling echania on the planet. The white echanatia. It's usually not a super great seller. And that's mostly because, you know, when the when the petals start to age, they look like used toilet paper. The issue I have with white echgonatia is it's a great contrast, but I can get that contrast with panacle hydrangeas that are blooming around the same time. So I don't typically reach for the white swan or pow white. I usually just reach for like a magnus or ruby star to give me that tertiary opposite color.

[00:30:15]But I'm not saying they're not pretty.

[00:30:19]>> Okay, there we go. All right. Well, we could spend all day here, guys, but I know you don't want to suffer through that. And uh I don't want to spend the next seven years editing, but you seem to like the no editing stuff that we have done in the past. And uh I have to admit, I kind of nailed that on the first try. Uh that might not happen every time. Just disclosure.

[00:30:46]There might be a lot of ums and ands and ums and things like that. Boy, these are pretty.

[00:30:53]What are you called? Look at that.

[00:30:59]Plenty of blooms.

[00:31:02]1198. Again, this is called Tiny Nugget.

[00:31:09]All right.

[00:31:11]Good stuff. Good stuff. spend a little bit more on those Monrovia named varieties where you go some like this like this blushing pink or blushing ruffles dilly.

[00:31:27]We've had they might have changed the name. I don't know why I think pink ruffles is a thing. Remember we found a bunch of these for like two bucks a piece. I can't remember. We filled up the car with them. We bought like 18 or 19 last year.

[00:31:42]They all came back.

[00:31:45]Like every last one of them. My front my front yard looks a little overplanted right now. I need those Bobos to pop.

[00:31:54]Uh so it doesn't look like a complete mess or I need them to start blooming so they can pay some rent. Oh man. Well, those ones that we bought at Lowe's, those all went into Miss Sharon's front yard, if you remember that, along with the some Asiatic liies, I did just kind of big bed big bed there for her around her rose sharon. The ones I transplanted, I had some shalom day lilies mixed in there. Um, and then a bunch of those pink ruffles and I divided them and I thought, "Oh, I'm going to lose some of them." No, all the mass came back. I am over the moon.

[00:32:33]It really worked out well. So, I don't know. The hospital might get an infusion of uh dillies here pretty soon if if uh it looks too messy when everything else starts blooming. So, all right guys, thank you very much. You have been very entertaining today. I am Stuart Moore.

[00:32:51]This is Landscape Rescue. Thank you very much for letting me into your home talk about plants.