Sweet and easy. (Honeysuckle)

Member Name: Bryn Pearson

Product:	Honeysuckle
Date:	18/03/02 (427 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: looks after itself, lovely flowers and scent.

Disadvantages: it can get a bit wild.

Let me introduce you to an excellent plant that will make any garden brighter - and for very little effort n your part.

Honeysuckle is a climbing plant - ie it will clamber over anything, given half a chance. It has non-descript green leaves, and lovely flowers - usually some combination of yellow and pinky red. The flowers produce a lovely aroma - which largely gives the plant its name. The sweet smell fills the air around the plant attracting people and insects in equal measure.

Where to grow it? Up anything - great for giving some life to a grim wire fence, or for putting up a trellis on a wall of your house. The happily grow on dead wood, so any small dead trees make an excellent home - you can also let it climb over living trees, but you have to prune every year to stop your tree from getting swamped. Obviously, if you have some sort of pergola like construction, you can encourage it over that. Honesuckle grows in the wild (although the odds are if you buy it from the shops it will have been cultivated.) However, its basially a hardy, long suffering sort of plant that can largely look after itself. It likes to see the sun now and then, but can cope with shade - it likes to get some water, but can cope with variations. It will survive hot summers, frosts and agressive pruning. It flowers during the summer, and usually for a good long time. it's much less tempermental than pretty much any other climbing thing I can think of (except for dog roses)and has a much longer period of flowering than most.

Other advantages: If you like to be eco friendly now and then, this is a great plant for insects. Bees love it. Where you have insects, you also get wild birds, so you can use it to promote wildlife in your garden.

Be warned: In the autumn it produces cute little berries, which while they don't look much like anything you might eat, could attract the attention of small children. it's always worth keeping little people and
berries apart - I don't believe the honeysuckle puts out anything especially toxic, but its certainly going to give you a poorly tum.

I love this plant, even if it does make me sneeze (this must be the perfume because the pollen is insect distributed.) It's so easy to look after, and you get excellent results for very little effort. it is ideal for bringing some vertical elements to small gardens, it is great for covering any sort of eyesore - walls, fences, sheds, etc can all be hidden and turned into luxurious bowers bythis wonderful plant. The smell is gives off is divine, the flowers look really good. it considered to be a touch old fashioned - a plant associated with cottage gardens, but I think this is hardly a reason to ignore it. Foreign exotics may look more dramatic when they flower, but they don't bloom as long or survive as well in our unpredictable climate. If you want a climbing plant, you won't find one better than this.

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