Hybrid climbing honeysuckle

Press, 9 December 1988, Page 10

Hybrid climbing honeysuckle

Gardener’s ! DIARY

Derrick Rooney

Last week I wrote about some of the lesser-known shrubby honeysuckles. Today, I would like to draw attention to a lesserknown climbing honeysuckle which is one of my favourites.

This is Lonicera x heckrottii, a hybrid of American origin. It is quite an old plant, and has coral-and-yellow flowers and an interesting genealogy, but you do not see it in many gardens.

Several clones were raised from the cross, and the best is named “Gold Flame.” It is a transatlantic hybrid: the parents are Lonicera x americana, a woodbine, and Lonicera sempervirens, the “trumpet honeysuckle.” Despite its name, Lonicera x americana is a European plant, a hybrid between two wild European honeysuckles; it is both cultivated and naturalised in New Zealand, where it may well be the most common of the honeysuckles. Fragrant; tough, vigorous and long lived, it is also usually pest free. The trumpet honeysuckle is one of the gems of the genus. I grew it for a while, but before I had a workable irrigation system, and summer drought killed it. The leaves are

evergreen and the flowers are perhaps the brightest in the genus, orange-red outside and yellow within. All in all, it is one of the most beautiful and elegant of climbers; alas, it is also sensitive to severe frosts and intolerant of drought. L. x heckrottii has been endowed with flowers a little less brilliant, but it has a much more robust constitution. And the flowers will be bright enough for most gardeners. The tube is yellow inside and coral, rather than orange, outside. There is no scent, but this deficiency can be overcome by planting the honeysuckle with a rose — a classic combination. I would suggest one of the more vigorous oldstyle climbers, preferably in pale or yolk-yellow shades. The two should flower at the same time, as happens in my garden, where the “Gold Flame” honeysuckle is teamed with the lovely old Noisette rose, "Alister Stella Grey.” “Celine

Forestier,” “Fortunea,” “Goldfinch,” or “Alberic Barbier” would do just as well.

Two of these roses — “Alister Stella Grey” and dear old “Alberic” — flower off and on year round, whenever there is a spell of mild weather. If, as I do, you like subtle combinations of colour you might team any or all of these plants with alstroemerias, not the brassy orangeflowered kinds but the strains now available with soft yellow or pastel flowers.

A good companion for such a grouping, if your taste still leans towards the offbeat and the nonabrasive, would be one of the Enkianthus.

Enkianthus is a genus of deciduous shrubs native to north-east Asia and distantly related to the azaleas, from which they differ in having dangling clusters of small-bell-shaped flowers. They are not brightly coloured, but have plenty of sophistication.

E. campanulatus is the most common garden species, and usually is seen as an erect shrub, two to three metres tall. There is a much taller old specimen in the woodland section of the Christ-

church Botanic Gardens, near the wooden bridge. The flowers are creamy white, with pinkish veins. In autumn the leaves, green throughout spring and summer, turn shades of red and gold.

Another, which used to be obtainable (though I have not seen it for several years) is a smaller and bushier plant with white flowers, fairly sparsely produced. I grew it mainly for its autumn leaf colour, a prolonged flare of fiery red; but a couple of years ago it found the summer heat intolerable, and expired. This was E. perulatus.

As its replacement, I have just planted a more adaptable species, E. cernuus var. rubens, which is stubbier in outline than E. campanulatus, and has broader leaves, with reddish stems. The little bell-shaped flowers are pinkish red and have a frilly mouth.

All the Enkianthus, incidentally, should succeed in any garden where deciduous azaleas grow well. A word of warning, though: if you do group them as suggested above, give them a bit of space. The climbers will smother them if given half a chance.