Honeysuckles (Lonicera) are versatile plants.
You can grow them as climbers and shrubs, as flowering standards, as hedges and topiary.
In fact pretty well the only thing you can't do with a honeysuckle is to persuade it to grow into a tree.
Honeysuckles are popular chiefly for their colourful, tubular flowers, often heavily fragrant and containing a sweet, edible nectar, hence the popular name.
All are easy from cuttings. Native to northern latitudes of the US, Europe and Asia, the genus was named by Linnaeus to honour Adam Lonicer, a 16th century German mathematician, doctor and botanist.
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Most are deciduous though a few are evergreen. The climbers ascend by twining round a support, they do not cling.
In general they are hardy though one of the loveliest, Giant Burmese Honeysuuckle (L. hildenbrandiana) is frost tender, sigh. A strapping, 15 metre climber, it has 15 to 20 centimetre flowers opening cream and changing to orange and gold before falling. I once saw one in full bloom entirely covering a swimming pool fence: envy nearly unhinged me.
My first honeysuckle was the English woodbine, L. periclymemum (5m) with red and cream flowers, blooming for several weeks in early summer.
I grew several from cuttings and planted them to cover the pergola leading from our back porch to the steps to the tennis court. It has done a great job for many years though needs increasingly extensive pruning every winter. Its scent is grippingly nostalgic, a reminder of my Kentish childhood.
It flowers at the same time as the climbing rose 'Albertine' and the colours are beautifully complementary, though you would need a strong arch to support them together.
L. x heckrottii 'Firecracker' (2m to 3m.) is a more manageable size, a pillar rather than a climber, perhaps, with similar but slightly larger flowers. I love the Italian woodbine (L. caprifolium, 3m to 4m) whose pink and cream flowers smell unlike any other honeysuckle.
Most honeysuckles flower before Christmas but semi-evergreen L. fragrantissima (3m), a straggly shrub with tiny, deliciously scented cream blossom, blooms throughout frosty August.
My favourite hedging honeysuckle is deciduous L. tartarica (4m) though sadly its pure white flowers are scentless. There is a pink and cream form, equally pretty, which I grow as a hedge beside a fence; the cattle keep it to 1.2m. It is a strong shrub and the stems could make a good base on which to graft a climber to create a standard.
Box leaf honeysuckle (L. nitida), marketed as BoxOz, is the go-to honeysuckle for dense, evergreen, more or less instant hedging or topiary.
Some honeysuckles are invasive, particularly L. japonica which is an environmental weed everywhere in Australia apart from the NT.
Garden centres carry a range of honeysuckles and they are also available by mail order. Try www.gardenexpress.com.au www.tesselaar.net.au. Stephen Ryan, Dicksonia Rare Plants (www.stephenryan.com.au) at Mount Macedon sometimes offers L. hildenbrandiana and says the berries taste of gin and tonic. Since I can't imagine it surviving a highland winter I cannot vouch for this.
