Honeysuckle

I have a honeysuckle vine, Harlequin. It has beautiful pink flowers and blooms all summer with the most wonderful smell.

It is my habit to sit on my deck in the early morning to drink my coffee and watch the birds. And this honeysuckle, especially just after dawn throws off this wonderful, wonderful aroma.

I would like to find its equivalent in a shrub, not a vine. Does anyone know of such a honeysuckle and where I can get it.

Thanks a bunch Pixi

Reply to
pixi
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There are indeed shrub honeysuckle (Lonicera). Lots of different kinds.

Look for plant nurseries that offer flowering shrubs.

Reply to
Cereoid-UR12-

There are quite a few varieties of shrub honeysuckle and many of them do produce fragrant but insignificant flowers, but they all tend to be large, sprawling plants. Lonicera pileata, nitida or fragrantissima are some of the most common shrub forms. Other species are also available but many are discouraged as ornamentals due to their selfseeding/invasive nature.

You might want to consider something like a daphne - most have incredible fragrance and are rather tidy shrubs with no propensity to overtake the world.

pam - gardengal

Reply to
Pam - gardengal

You can have the scent of honeysuckle at the height of winter if your zone will support Winter Honeysuckle, Lonicera ragrantissima:

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is a twiggy shrub that blooms in winter well before its leaves are returning, so though the fragrant blooms are smaller than summer honeysuckles, they're really quite showy in the winter context & with no leaves to detract from the white flowers. After it starts to re-leaf, it produces larger than average honeysuckle fruits, so still rather decorative.

There are many deciduous azaleas that have extremely redolent perfume, though only for one month of spring. Here's one that singlehandedly sweetens up the atmosphere while it's flowering:

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one that is fantastically redolent is the wild (non-hybridized) Western Azalea (Rhododendron occidentale). In their natural range in Oregon, they are often called "honeysuckle bush" because the sweet scent can be detected long before one reaches the shrub.

We have a smaller deciduous azalea with that smells of cloves & spice even from a great distance:

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this evergreen species rhododendron:
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wonderfully of cinnamon. But for a rhody with PERSISTANT sweet odor, this hard-to-find but worth-the-hunt shrub is the one:
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tolmachevii has the most powerfully redolent leaves of any rhody I've experienced. To some it might be a bit too medicinal a scent, but I just love it. I planted it right on the path & smell it year round, as the slightest breeze seems to be enough to induce the leaves to release their scent. When I weed around it, brushing into it, I can smell its scent on my clothing for a long time after.

The most strikingly scented shrubs are the Lilacs. Around here they're rather cliche shrubs but beautiful enough to deserve so much attention, though if you wanted something a bit less common, there are many rarer types of lilacs worth driving a bit further to obtain from larger nurseries with more than the usual to choose from.

The untidy butterfly bush flowers a very long time. The blooms smell of the best grade of honey tinctured with vanilla. Good golly they're great for their odor, as also for the largeness & persistance of the blooms. If you track down an alleged "dwarf" you'll have an eight foot tall fountaining shrub slightly easier to manage for size & no less flowery. Here's my "Nanho Blue":

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for needing pruning or they get out of hand, butterfly bushes grow great without any attention. It's a good choice for a location where water doesn't reach, like maybe on the road or near where you usually park the car, so that you smell it every time you go somewhere & return.

There are a couple different shrubs called "Mock Orange" because the flowers smell like orange blossoms, including Western Syringa:

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the odor can be less than sweet at too close a range, so it should be part of a pefume array a bit further from the central location.

For a really hot sunny spot, Mexican Mock Orange is a good choice for beauty & scent. I have one called "Aztec Pearl" which smells of almonds:

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you planted rosemary & lavender nearby -- they too like dryish hot sunny spots so all live happily together -- you'd have a veritable scent-factory, &amp the lavender in particular can bloom from late spring to mid-Autumn for persistant perfume. The Rosemary will grow to be a six foot tall shrub or larger & release its odor mainly when knocked into:
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a foot note, if you plant some hyacinths at the foot of all your shrubs, on the sunnyside, man oh man will the garden be filled with scent. I always thought hyacinths were too damned gaudy & I like subtler flowers, but the super-duper perfume induced me to plant them, &amp they're especially nice to add around shrubs with unperfumed flowers.

-paghat the ratgirl The lavender, depending on variety & species (so select well) can become a three or four foot tall &amp wide shrub that blooms so persistently & smells so nice:

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verbena is a small semi-creeping subshrub in my zone, not physically impressive; but in a hotter zone it would be a great big floppy shrub, untidy like a butterfly bush, but the great thing is the leaves are the most powerfully redolent leaves of any I have experienced. You don't have to bruise the shrub to smell the sweet lemon sucker smell. Of all the citrusy shrubs this one's the best for its scent, & because it is the leaves rather than the flowers that smell so fine, the scent is present mid-spring through late autumn. It is also the #1 make-your-own-tea plant you can have in the garden:
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's spring bottlebrushes smell of wild honey, plus the autumn colors are super.
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've found the scent does not travel far, though.

Reply to
paghat

I know there are many kinds of honeysuckle shrubs. I even have some, but they bloom only in the spring. I would like to have a honeysuckle that blooms all summer as the Harlequin does and that smells as lovely.

So many of the modern honeysuckles have no smell at all. Outrageous!!

I live in what is considered to be a semi-arid area of the Potomac Highlands in WV. Usually we get comparatively little rain. I have heard that the last time we have had as much rain as in this year was 1901. However, most years we don't get a lot.

I cannot grow azaleas here, partly because of the dryness but mostly because of the bitter winds. I live on a hill in a valley between two mountains. The valley acts as a windtunnel in winter for some reason. I have tried wrapping azaleas in burlap, buying those that were developed in Wisconsin for growing there and so on. No luck. I had dozens, only one is left alive.

They do grow azaleas in town, but I think they succeed because they are more or less sheltered from the wind by houses and other buildings.

I don't know about daphne. I am not sure we can grow it here. (Zone 5). Although we are in WV, our weather is comparable to much further north. It was 23 below at least one night last winter. I blame that on the elevation.

So, I am still looking for a Honeysuckle shrub that behaves like my Harlequin honeysuckle.

Reply to
pixi

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