Oh Honeysuckle, I love your sweet perfume
as it pervades my garden room.
Intoxicated by your smell
I think I’m falling under your spell.
Oh Lonicera, you smell so sweet,
without you my garden would be incomplete
but you survived the transformation
and stand there proud in jubilation.
Lonicera (Honeysuckle)
We will survive!
I have honeysuckles all over my garden, survivors of the garden revamp. Lonicera periclymenum, the one directly in front of me as I gaze out of my patio doors, used to be climbing over my gazebo which blew down in high winds of 2014.
The gazebo has been moved down to the LHS corner of the garden now, and a new honeysuckle has been planted in a pot below it. That is yet to show any signs of flowering so far this year. However the one which grows out of the corner of the patio, with its roots in a tiny space between the patio slabs and the surrounding wall, has come back with a vengeance this year.
I had to cut her right back almost to the ground in 2014 to remove her tentacles entangled around the legs of the gazebo. She spent most of her time climbing back up a metal pyramid last year after her severe pruning, but did flower eventually. This year for the past month during May and June it has been an almost daily task winding her tentacles around the pyramid, or else trimming them off if there was nowhere for them to go. That has paid off, as she is looking and smelling beautiful now.
I have also another very tiny new honeysuckle making her way up the back of the trellis around the dog run, growing in a pot. No sign of any flowers coming on that one yet though. Then on the other side of the garden there is another one behind my pink Buddleia, which will continue to climb back up the new fence on that side of the garden.
Another survivor, in the wild bit at the LHS of the garden behind the dog run, is just coming into flower low down, but I’m hoping that she will have climbed right up to cover next door’s eyesore Leylandii, as she did before they were cut back level with my fence during the garden revamp by the landscaper.
Further back towards the end of the garden on the RHS there was a different, wilder type of honeysuckle, with tiny flowers (according to my Googling, probably Lonicera japonica). That also managed to survive the revamp and is climbing up the fence and a greengage tree trunk, which is a self set from the mother tree next door, discovered during the revamp which I insisted was left in situ.
The smell in my garden in the evening is awesome. As I sit supping my before dinner aperitif I wonder whether it is the alcohol that is intoxicating me, or the aroma. It must be the aroma, because I still feel intoxicated on the days when I sup ginger beer instead of wine!
In 2014 after her pruning almost back to the ground, she managed to be flowering in July and in 2012 before the garden revamp, she was flowering in July and August, in fierce competition with the neighbouring Buddleia, and other huge shrubs around her.
Update 12th August 2015
There are still a few flowers on all the Honeysuckles in my garden. Not enough to draw the eye, but they are there. However, the plant on the pyramid on the patio now is covered in orange/red berries where there used to be flowers, which is attractive in its own right. So Honeysuckle lives on through August.
My Garden Transformation 