You can - and should - prune buddleias hard. They can even be cut back to almost ground level. Do this in late winter or early spring. The newest growth is most floriferous so hard pruning will encourage more of this growth and remove the less productive older wood.

btw, the shrub is not frost sensitive and in mild winter climates can remain almost fully evergreen. In a mild winter in zone 7, I would not be surprised to see foliage in February.

im a little confused.. because i see no pix of it being lush ...

but if the rest is lush.. then its time to cut out the dead stuff ...

but think about this ... you trimmed some pieces at about 3 feet .. now fast forward a year or 3.. and try to image what you fert.. with 2 or 3 pieces as big as you cut off hanging out at 3 feet ... this is when whole parts collapse from what i call 'hanging weight' ...

so next time you prune such ... cut it all down to about 6 inches.. and then all the new growth will come from the bottom .. and you will have a nice transformed plant over the years ...

note when gal said to do this stuff ...

its the basis of what is called rejuvenation pruning.. and every season.. you remove the largest ugly pieces ... and your plant grows form the bottom ...

and this is general shrub handling ... there is nothing specific to your plant.. other than perhaps the timing issue ... and that general idea is you prune after flowering.. unless you are willing to give up flowers for this year .. but the beauty of dong only part of the plant.. is no matter what you do.. .the untouched parts will still flower this year ...

now watch a couple of these vids.. listening to see if they address what i am so inartfully trying to say ....

ken

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rejuvenation+pruning+of+buddleia&t=ffnt&iax=videos&ia=videos

Being my first time pruning it, I got nervous about cutting off all of the new growth :-O You all suggested late Winter last year, which is why I did it in February.

I didn't want to take it to the ground, though, because I read a lot of people saying that it took a few years for it to grow back to an attractive height. It's kind of the centerpiece for this section of yard, so my original goal was 3', but like I said, the new growth made me nervous.

But maybe this Winter I'll take it to 6", anyway, and just have a less attractive 2022 in exchange for a better 2023...

Haha, @ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5 , I guess "lush" is subjective :-P I didn't take any pics of the bush from a distance because it blends in with the trees behind it and you can't see anything, but in this pic (#4 from the first post) you can see that the limbs on the left and right have nice, new leaves all over them. That's what I meant by "lush".

But OK, my takeaway is that it's better to remove the dead limbs now rather than wait, so I'm headed out with my pruners and a saw...

Once well established, a hard pruned buddleia will grow back to full size in less than a single season.

Mine get so much winterkill I would never cut any living stems 'cause you never know when it will get winterkilled completely. No reason to stress it more by cutting off living growth IMO.

I would very rarely refer to any plant as ugly, but for an unpruned Buddleja I’d make an exception. Its a shrub with no redeeming features, imo, other than its flowers and its grey foliage, and then only when in full growth. Otherwise it’s just a mass of random sticks topped off by dead brown blooms which refuse to drop. And it’s even more of a mess in winter. A hard pruned Budleja will push out straight, strong stems with large leaves and big flowers. This treatment is pretty much a sine qua non for growing this species at all attractively. If I lived somewhere where it’s too marginal to hard prune I don’t think I’d bother with it at all. Hard pruning in spring shouldn’t result in any more kill in the following winter than leaving it alone. It has the whole summer to grow strong new canes which should no more vulnerable to cold than twiggy old stuff from previous years.

@floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK, if I'm being honest, it's not exactly my favorite, either :-( I bought it before I knew anything at all about gardening, I would just go to Lowes and buy $1,000 worth of whatever looked good, then stick it wherever it fit.

If I were starting over now, I probably would have never bought it. But at this point I've put in companion plants trying to build up the whole area, using it as a centerpiece, so taking it out now would probably lead to a complete rebuild of the whole area.

Last year, DigDoug (something like that, I can't remember the exact username) posted a mock up and suggest replacing it with a crape myrtle. I'm still considering that, but there's a power line nearby and Duke Power has a history of just destroying trees for no reason... so maybe not.

If it’s a focal point I’d definitely hard prune it. Then you'll get a far shapelier shrub.

^^ As well as a much more floriferous one.