Their staggered flowering times mean your pergola will be covered with sweet-scented flowers from May until September. Note it really is vigorous and in the right place will make a very large climber so best to make sure you have space for it. Simon Lycett may do... or debate this issue live on our message boards. Charles Quest-Ritson reminisces about the day his bargain purchase of a cyclamen in Woolworths proved to be something rather special. The late Dutch honeysuckle, L. periclymenum ‘Serotina’, flowers with a deeper purple splash to replace the early version’s pink, and smells fine too, but later. They also have flowers that are delicious dipped in a light batter and deep-fried, either as they are or filled with cream cheese. The flower colour of honeysuckle changes slightly once pollinated. When it comes to honeysuckle shrubs, winter honeysuckle (L. fragrantissima) — grown in USDA zones 4 through 8 — is an excellent choice for informal hedges or screens. I gave one to Richard Nutt, who showed it to the RHS Floral B Committee; we were disappointed it didn’t get an award. © Santiago Urquijo. Its flowers are chocolate-coloured on the outside, a striking contrast with the creamy-yellow insides. This is perhaps the best honeysuckle for attracting hummingbirds. Their gardens and their memories live on in mine, but where are the young, acquisitive plantsmen that I was once? It is a … It also makes a nice potted plant for areas where you will enjoy the lemony fragrance most. They get a bit confused by our mild winters and I find that L. korolkowii is the first of all my garden shrubs to come into leaf. Prepare a spot for these in your garden! My grandmother gave me L. japonica Aureoreticulata – she loved the way the leaf-veins are tricked out in gold – and the head gardener at the Hanbury Botanical Gardens at La Mortola pressed me to take the species with the largest flowers, L. hildebrandiana, which grows to 33ft in sub-tropical Assam, but is too tender to grow outside in England. INRA has, however, produced some very good forms of our native honeysuckle, Lonicera periclymenum, of which the most impressive is called Chic&Choc. L. xylostemon is a shrub and the shrubby honeysuckles are wonderful no-nonsense plants for gardens on poor soil such as chalk or Bagshot sand. The most familiar Honeysuckle flowers are narrow, flared tubes. We have Lonicera periclymenum ‘Belgica’, or early Dutch honeysuckle, with its raspberry ripple flowers and good fragrance, by the main door leading to the garden. My husband and I planted it … Confederate jasmine is not hardy in the Upper South and ... Winter Honeysuckle ... plant in a sheltered site to prevent frost damage. By June the soil should be warm enough to sow directly where they are to grow, especially if you put a cut-off plastic bottle over them to make a micro greenhouse for the emerging seedling. Our noses may not be that acute but the lovely scent of honeysuckle is enough to draw anyone into their garden on a summer’s evening, and the lovely flowers earn their keep well enough in the brightness of the midday sun. Honeysuckle are perfect for training up a wall, fence or trellis and look particularly spectacular when combined with an early flowering clematis. This honeysuckle has the most showy flowers of any American species. or debate this issue live on our message boards. With a passel of common names like Carolina allspice, sweetshrub, strawberry shrub, pineapple shrub, and sweet Betsy,… The best shrubby honeysuckles don’t grow too big. Bees like to collect pollen close to the hive and will keep returning to a source of nectar for as long as it is available. Manfred Gottschalk. The seed of L. implexa hailed from my uncle’s garden in Majorca and L. xylostemon from Italy’s Gran Paradiso park (with the consent of a warden, I hasten to add). Charles Quest-Ritson muses on daphnes, the lovely winter flowers which seemingly ought to be a lot hardier than they are. This should not interfere with the beans as long as I keep each wigwam well watered. Graham Thomas presented me with super-floriferous L. similis var. Botanical name: Lonicera. Plant it near a path or a seating area to enjoy the scent as you walk by or sit in … The same is true of L. nitida, also evergreen, but most often used for hedging; it needs no fewer than three cuts a year to keep it tidy. In contrast, Choisya, is easier to grow, and has the benefit of being evergreen with attractive glossy leaves and it is tolerant of a wide range of conditions. The Winter Honeysuckle, also called Sweet Breath of Spring, is one of the best fragrant flowering shrubs you can plant in your garden. The wild honeysuckle, Lonicera periclymenum, or woodbine, works best if it is in some shade – needing warmth rather than direct sunlight to bring … My latest acquisitions are L. kamtchatka and closely-related L. caerulea var edulis. Not all are scented so it is good to know which ones are. Charles Quest-Ritson extols the virtues of delightful honeysuckle. Bees take over pollinating duties from moths during the day, and then later the flowers bear round, red fruits that are important food for songbirds, while the tangle of stems makes excellent cover for nests. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. I recommend L. chaetocarpa , a short shrub with hairy grey leaves and large primrose-yellow flowers. 4 Wisteria. Many are from central Asia and expect very hot summers and very cold winters. Add the scent of sweet smelling honeysuckle to your garden. The wild honeysuckle, Lonicera periclymenum, or woodbine, works best if it is in some shade – needing warmth rather than direct sunlight to bring out the best of its scent – and a west-facing urban wall is ideal. It will grow in sun or shade and performs best in a moist, well-drained soil. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, delavayi (he’s also credited with an autumn-flowering form of our common honeysuckle called Graham Thomas, but he told me he had nothing to do with its introduction and didn’t know where it came from). Jasmine. In all areas, locate plant where its winter fragrance can be enjoyed, such as near an entrance or path or under a bedroom window. A vigorous grower, give … More robust than pumpkins and squashes – which in a cold summer will refuse to grow – courgettes will reliably produce delicious fruits within the full range of our unpredictable British summers. There’s a manky cultivar called Baggeson’s Gold that’s even uglier, but that’s only two duds among some 180 species that all make excellent garden plants. With plant-derived ingredients and essential oils at the base of their formulas, their home and body products are both powerful and pleasantly-scented (think mint and lavender). Henceforth, we could look forward to hybrids that carried long, sweet-scented flowers on tough, neat shrubs. Vines bloom over a long season with long, tubular red flowers with golden-yellow interiors. It is better to have half a dozen small ones than one or two big ones – small courgettes taste better and stimulate the plant to produce more. Extracted from Gardening At Longmeadow by Monty Don, BBC Books, £26. Sweet honeysuckle scent, spell-binding jasmine fragrance… Fragrant vines teleport us to richly-scented memories!. Alas, this species, along with all the American honeysuckles, has no fragrance. I also often grow some courgettes in with sweetcorn. This is followed by Lonicera syringantha spreading its fragrance far and wide in the spring garden. Japanese honeysuckle, Lonicera japonica, however, flowers on the same year’s growth, so should be pruned each spring. But birds don't have a sense of smell and it can take a while for them to find nectar plants like this. Some of our honeysuckles came from seed collected in the wild. I’ve probably grown more species of honeysuckle than of any other genus except, perhaps, roses and primulas. If it's allowed to flower because "people like the scent" it then produces seed, birds will eat the seed and deposit it in wooded areas, along fence rows, etc., extensively spreading the vine. The fragrant flowers are followed by red or yellow berries in autumn. However, I rather fancy twining it up an apple tree in the orchard. The botanical reason for this strength of smell is to attract the moths that pollinate it – hence its increased power at night. If you don't get hummingbirds right away, be patient. Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group. The flowers can bloom in gorgeous bright pinks, oranges, yellows or whites, and some varieties have a … Climbing honeysuckle. Grow them up walls and fences, or over a pergola to scent the air near a seating area. Botanical name: Jasminum floridum, J. humile (Italian jasmine) J. laurifolium nitidum … Honeysuckles can be grown as ground cover in suitable areas but most do best with some type of support, either along a fence or on a trellis. 5 Freesia. Honey bees like saucer-shaped flowers that are easier for their short tongues to dip into, such as mallow (far right, pink), lesser scabious, cornflower (right), wild clary (far right, blue), hollyhocks and evening primrose. The main thing to avoid is letting it dry out too much. Lonicera periclymenum 'Scentsation' Plant Patent #16,240 Sku #8636 Simply scentsational, this is possibly the most fragrant Honeysuckle of all! My early flowering form called Belgica came from Daphne Hoskins at Kellaways and evergreen L. henryi from John Phillips, Wiltshire’s greatest plantsman. Resilient and bearing many flowers, climbing plants help cover a facade with green, camouflage a wire fence or decorate a pergola or lattice. I am planning to plant L. caprifolium, sometimes sold as Italian honeysuckle. I’ve always valued plants that come from friends’ gardens. An evergreen groundcover plant called Lonicera pileata doesn’t interest me at all. All these will reach 10ft in height. I gave one to Richard Nutt, who showed it to the RHS Floral B Committee; we were disappointed it didn’t get an award. The plant arrived quickly and was healthy. Here’s a melancholy postscript. Produced in succession from early to late summer, the blossoms give way to small, bright red berries. I recommend L. chaetocarpa, a short shrub with hairy grey leaves and large primrose-yellow flowers. Clematis montana is a vigorous climber, so is ideal for covering unsightly walls … I got very excited about 20 years ago when the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), announced that it had managed to cross the two types of honeysuckle. Exceptionally prolific, free flowering with showy, bright yellow blooms followed by bright red berries. Bought the Scentsation honeysuckle at a garden center...planted per directions, about 6 wks ago. There’s a big division between the honeysuckles that twine and climb and usually open their long flowers to exhale a delicious scent and the ones that have smaller flowers on fast-growing super-hardy bushes. Cup and Saucer Vine. One of my favourite joys of this midsummer season is the range of scents, and my favourite of all is honeysuckle. Monty revisits one of his classic books, Gardening at Longmeadow, in an occasional series. Once growing strongly they are pretty hardy and healthy with only grey, powdery mildew likely to be a problem – this is always a result of the roots becoming too dry. It needs sun to perform best, though, and we’re limited in wall space. The best varieties of Honeysuckle to grow for scent are Lonicera japonica 'Halliana' AGM image left, evergreen or semi-evergreen and a vigorous climber growing to around 10 meters. It tolerates drought, erosion, dry soil and clay soil, and can even withstand proximity to black walnuts, unlike most other plants. The honeysuckle plant is also tolerant of different soil types, though it helps to grow the vine in well-draining soil amended with organic matter. I love them – but not all of them. I did not know that I could buy real honeysuckle until I saw this by accident. Most honeysuckles flower on the previous year’s wood so should be pruned – if necessary – immediately after flowering. Coral honeysuckle is a great honeysuckle as it is a huge attractant to hummingbirds and it's also a very beautiful, flowering vine. All the gardening friends I mention above are dead now. A perfect plant – right around the clock. The best shrubby honeysuckles don’t grow too big. Whorls of sweetly fragrant, 2' long creamy white flowers that deepen to primrose yellow are borne at the ends of stems adorned with deep blue green foliage in late spring and summer and are followed by clear crimson berries. Clematis montana. Monty Don shared his advice for attracting wildlife to British gardens, with fragrant flowers. English Wild Honeysuckle ( Lonicera periclymenum) in full bloom in the countryside, Oxfordshire, UK. Charles Quest-Ritson talks about dahlias, once so unloved, and how they enjoying a surge of popularity. The fragrance of this English Honeysuckle even intensifies in … No comments have so far been submitted. Pictured: Early Dutch honeysuckle. We have a beautiful form with glaucous leaves that flowers in April and suckers well; it came from Keith Steadman, of Wickwar in Gloucestershire. Unfortunately, trumpet honeysuckle doesn’t have much of a scent, but some other non-invasive varieties do have that amazing fragrance. L. japonica ‘Halliana’ is another I want to add to this garden; it is deciduous but hangs onto its leaves through all but the coldest winters and flowers right through midsummer. Or try fragrant jasmine. It is deciduous, copes well with shade and has fabulous scent. They also have great foliage. Everyone knows winter-flowering L. x purpusii, but few grow intensely sweet-scented L. syringantha, which we had from Chris Thornton. There are many to choose from including fragrant shrubs. Honeysuckle is a sweet treat that many of us remember from our childhoods. Mine is in almost permanent rather dry shade so the chances of it flowering are slim, as the combination of too much shade with too little water will always inhibit flowering, but the plant survives this mistreatment with a degree of robustness. Smaller flowers belonging to unhybridised species are likely to contain far more pollen than huge show blooms on plants that are the result of elaborate breeding. Deciduous or evergreen, climbing honeysuckles (Lonicera) have thin, flexible stems that twine around their supports. With dark green to blue-green leaves and sweet-smelling flowers, they grow as either far-reaching vines or arching shrubs. The slender 2-inch blooms usually open white and turn pale yellow flushed with pink or pale purple. © Monty Don 2012. These include European honeysuckle ( Lonicera periclymenum ) and winter honeysuckle. Yet it never becomes overpowering or crude in the way jasmine or even lilies can.Honeysuckle is fruity, warm and gently erotic. Bees also love flowering trees and legumes – such as peas, beans, clover and sweet peas – as well as dandelions, blackberries, asters, ivy and willow. It died. To keep a honeysuckle in tiptop condition you must provide the roots with rich soil and plenty of shade and the flowers with some sunshine, preferably in the evening. For winter flowers and scent, the deciduous winter honeysuckle, Lonicera fragrantissima, is unbeatable. Some also produce shiny black fruits after flowering, providing food for the wildlife in your garden. Charles Quest Ritson says it’s time we got rid of the notion that roses are difficult to grow, Alan Titchmarsh: How to plant late blooming flowers that will make your garden glow through the winter, Alan Titchmarsh: How the dahlia shrugged off its ‘too common to plant’ tag — and thank goodness it did, Mulberries: Firmer than a blackberry, juicier than a raspberry, and squirtier than any other fruit, Country Life's Top 100 architects, builders, designers and gardeners, The daftest plant name in English, and how it belongs to a wonderful flower just starting to show its potential, Life, death and daphnes – and the variety that goes in and out of extinction peril, Dahlias, the ‘miracles of complexity’ that we’ve learned to love and cherish, The day that Woolworths accidentally sold me an endangered species. Cobaea scandens, Annual, Perennial in zones 9 to 11. I would recommend planting two varieties – early Dutch honeysuckle (Lonicera periclymenum ‘Belgica’) and late Dutch honeysuckle (Lonicera periclymenum ‘Serotina’). The shrub Daphne is known for is lovely perfume, but it is not 100% reliable or easy to grow. So plants with a long flowering period are better than a short, spectacular harvest. Honeysuckle is a heat tolerant plant that can grow almost anywhere. Alas, they never appeared. Vine seems to be doing well, and getting some blooms, but so far...not a bit of fragrance....which is the main reason we bought it. This year I have planted my courgettes at the centre of my climbing bean wigwams. Coral honeysuckle is one of the best South Florida plants for attracting hummingbirds. 2 Magnolia. All species of honeysuckle plant fall into two categories: 1) arching shrubs and 2) twinning bines, with the large majority being climbing plants that make for attractive honeysuckle vines. 3 Gardenia. Both carry edible purple fruits rather like a cylindrical blueberry and both seem happy in a stony corner of our chalk garden. The oval to spade-shaped leaves, which grow up to 8 cm long, are deciduous or evergreen. The scent of honeysuckle is heavenly and used to our delight in perfumes, soaps … Nearly all honeysuckles will grow in shade, but if the flowers can have sunshine for half the day they’ll be more floriferous and the fragrance will be noticeably stronger. Natalia Ganelin. 15 Fragrant Plants That Will Make Your Garden Smell Amazing. Marianne Purdie. It replaced another honeysuckle planted 10 yrs ago which had an abundance of heavenly fragrance. 1 Hyacinth. Taking the blooms off the plant and sucking the honey-sweet nectar was fun and exciting. Caroline Gauvin. The scent of L. etrusca bade me stop and look for seed one warm summer evening as I motored up the Tiber valley. “The scented honeysuckle year starts with Lonicera x pupusii, the best of the winter flowerers, which produces strongly scented white flowers on bare winter stems. Best for fragrance Only a fraction of the 200 or so honeysuckles on record compete with our native common honeysuckle, Lonicera periclymenum, for fragrance. There is so much I would like to give them. Deliciously scented, Lonicera periclymenum 'Scentsation' (Dutch Honeysuckle) is a vigorous, deciduous vine with masses of exceptionally fragrant, creamy-white to yellow flowers. Its fragrance saturates these sunken Herefordshire lanes, the warm pools of air soaking up the scent like blotting paper till you can almost see it. Published: 22:31 GMT, 26 June 2020 | Updated: 22:31 GMT, 26 June 2020. I’m hoping for enough fruit to fill a small bowl. To take full advantage of the scent, plant near an entrance, window or doorway. Harvest the fruit as soon as they are big enough to handle. No less desirable is L. involucrata, a present from Bill Baker; its yellow flowers are set off by crimson bracts. Blooming brilliant! Action plan: Nigel Colborn's essential jobs for your garden... Bugs and bees? L. periclymenum (common honeysuckle or woodbine): Prized for its deliciously sweet smelling flowers, which are especially fragrant in the early morning and late evening. There are a lot of silly names for flowers our there – and Charles Quest-Ritson has a chilling warning for those. For years I have been trying to find candles or soaps with an authentic honeysuckle scent, because it is my favorite fragrance. Scented Honeysuckle found in: Honeysuckle 'Scentsation', Honeysuckle 'Serotina', Honeysuckle 'Belgica', Honeysuckle 'Hall's Prolific', Honeysuckle .. Did someone just make cleaning fun? The wild honeysuckle, Lonicera periclymenum, works especially well in a town backyard as it prefers some shade. The leaves, meanwhile, are eaten by butterfly larvae. Keith was very keen on shrubby honeysuckles (and willows, too) and it was from him that we acquired L. chrysantha and L. ruprechtiana. They can apparently detect it up to a quarter of a mile away. Honeysuckle is wonderfully good for wildlife. Fans of Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day know the brand's products clean as good as they smell. Monty explained that the soil should be warm enough in June to sow courgettes directly where they are to grow (file image).