I live in Rio Rancho. My butterfly bushes are growing back from the roots. Take a look at the base of the plant and see if you've got new growth there.

thanks for the input - I did pull aside the mulch and 3 out of 4 are showing growth from the roots. The 4th one wasn't mulched and isn't doing anything yet, although it's 5 yrs old and the other 3 were just planted last fall.

I have 2 butterfly bushes. One is about 6 years old and is 12 feet tall. It is slowly growing up from the bottom. We are going to wait until June till we see if we need to prune the topmost branches. The other bush is about 3 years old. It is also growing slowly up from the bottom. I think we'll wait till June also before pruning. The hard freeze we had this winter really took its toll.

I just noticed that the biggest, oldest butterfly bush that I was sure was dead (the only one that wasn't mulched) is showing some growth from the ground. It's very small - I'm going to wait another month or two before doing any removal of dead stuff.