I’VE probably grown more species of honeysuckle than of any other genus except, perhaps, roses and primulas. I love them—but not all of them. An evergreen ground cover plant called Lonicera pileata doesn’t interest me at all.
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. 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.
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 superhardy bushes. 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. Henceforth, we could look forward to hybrids that carried long, sweet scented flowers on tough, neat shrubs. Alas, they never appeared.
INRA has, however, produced some very good forms of our native honeysuckle, Lonicera periclymenum, of which the most impressive is called Chic&Choc. Its flowers are chocolate-coloured on the outside, a striking contrast with the creamy-yellow insides.
この記事は Country Life UK の June 13, 2018 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は Country Life UK の June 13, 2018 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds
