I think if your iris are just blooming, it's too early to give up hope on the buddleia. I can;t advise you on the other. One of my buddelias did not lose its leaves, but the other four did, and they leaf out at various times according to the variety.
kay

I can't advise on buddleia. But my brugmansias froze to the ground this winter. As the others have at least 1 to 2 feet of growth, I decided to cut down the dead one and discovered growth coming from the roots.

Hope springs eternal :>)

Don't give up yet - my butterfly bush is just now showing some leaves coming up from the ground and I'm in zone 7b - it died to the ground because of unusually cold weather. I thought it was a goner but someone on this site recommended patience so I just kept waiting and giving it some water. Now it's about 12" high - so there's still hope for yours.

I love buddleia (butterfly bushes, right?) but I just get the regular purple ones...nothing fancy. Most of them come back pretty well, considering they're not really rated for my zone. I never cut them back (the branches keep the deer out of the garden) but they usually start leafing out at the very bottom in the next few weeks, but I don't get blooms until mid/late July. The ones at the store bloom much earlier, but the butterfly bushes are beautiful with the coneflowers! :)

There's another GW thread about buddleia 'Honeycomb' where someone commented it's not hardy below Z6 but if yours was mulched well, I wouldn't give up hope just yet. Google results generally say it's hardy to Z5. All my buddleia plants have sent up healthy new growth this year but not all at the same time. I have several different varieties that I cut back in March.

i don't know what type of butterfly bush we have. but ours is also just coming up now.

I was recently at a garden center that has a 2 year guarantee on their shrubs. A sign, however, said certain shrubs were exempt from this, including butterfly bush. When I asked why butterfly bush was excluded, the cashier said that since these shrubs leaf out so late in the season, they were getting people bringing in dormant shrubs thinking the shrubs were dead. Instead, the shrubs just hadn't leafed out yet.

I hope yours makes it!

I spoke to the nursery lady today - her pots are all still behind the greenhouses...I don`t think she`ll be selling them this year, they were a little bit of a zone pusher and it doesn`t sound like they survived for her. If nothing happens within two weeks (I did a scratch test and I`m PRETTY sure it`s a goner) I`ll replace with something else. It`s the first plant I`ve had die on me in a few years and only cost me $6 so I`m not completely gutted :)

"vanilla scented aclepsia"? Do you mean butterfly weed? I searched on "vanilla scented" and came up with A. incarnata. I have a handful of these and they are already up about a foot. I also have A. tuberosa and that is barely poking its head out of the soil. Depending on which one you have you should know w/in a couple weeks if it's really dead. I'm a warm Z5 and they can be a little finicky but once established seem to come back year after year. I do find the incarnata survive winters much better than tuberosa though.

Yup - butterfly weed (it's white and smells all vanilla like) and I peeked in the bed again today (It's in a bed with some ditch lilies so kind of in the back and hidden) and it's definitely growing...so phew on that one.