Planting out a Honeysuckle

As we're currently on a mission to make the garden more private, so we're happter to spend more time in the garden, we've recently put up some trellis. It was a great opportunity to go shopping! Quite often we 'window shop' in the garden centre and I'm told that I can't buy something unless I know where it's going. Jolly good advice, but I rarely know where I'm going to put something - it's just not my style! So this time, having an actual place to put an actual plant, made me quite excited!

After first having a look in the books, knowing that we wanted something hardy and ideally something evergreen, that if we went for a Clematis we'd need a Group 1 (because it doesn't need pruning and will therefore provide cover all year), we both came up with lots of ideas. So, it was then time to do the business, we'd go to the garden centre with intent. After wandering around looking at the Clematis (no group information on the labels), and checking out the Jasmine, we decided that a Honeysuckle was the way to go. Specifically Lonicera henryii 'Copper Beauty', it starts with deep bronze leaves when they're younger, maturing to green. Then in the summer comes the magic, whorls of lovely yellow flowers, with anthers splaying out to pollinators inviting them for a visit, there's even a promise of fragrance!

It's quite a vigorous climber, so the label says, 6-10 metres! That's find as we're likely to buy or make an arch to go next to the trellis at a later date, meaning that it's the ideal plant. Also it doesn't need regular pruning, just prune to remove dead or damaged branches or to keep the plant in check. Every couple of years prune out an older branch to encourage new growth for the bottom. All good so far.

The troublesome, as always in our garden, is the digging. Normally is the clay, this time with was gravel and rubble, as you can see in the photo to the left. The downside of this is that we may need to feed the Honeysuckle more than we were expecting, the upside is that it may keep it in check for us.

Inbetween digging and using the 'claw' to scrape out a hole, I checked one of my books, just to see if there we're any special requirements. I had to ensure that I didn't disturb the rootball, and I had to prune the plant back a bit. The label said that the Honeysuckle wanted lots of compost - there was recently a sale at the garden centre, so I knew I could definitely provide that. I brought the plant up to the whole and found that the hole was plenty deep enough. The middle photo shows the plant without the stakes, I was glad to see that it's a robust plant and can stand on its own. I was less glad with te stuggle of getting the pot-bound thing out of the pot. But managed eventually, although this probably breaks the 'don't disturb the rootball' rule. Hopefully it'll be so glad to be out of a pot that it won't mind?

So after using the bonsai scissors to give the Honeysuckle a light prune we have the big reveal. I'm looking forward to watching the growth of this, I'm hoping that it does exactly what we want. The next job will probably be the hanging baskets - there's no rest for the wicked!