OMG that is beautiful is it blooming like that now!!!

Thank you, Carlene! I sent you an email just now. This was Daryl's idea and I should have never doubted him. Picture was taken about dark-thirty a couple of days before the fling. The last couple of showers knocked about half of the blooms off, but it's still looking good and attracting the hummers.

Carol (not sure if I'm "the other Carol" or "Carol #3," lol)

Carol, thanks for posting the pic-WOW! That's just gorgeous!

You're welcome, Harriett. I have no love for wild honeysuckle, other than it's gorgeous scent. We have some of that encroaching on the southwest edge of our yard from the woods and I have a feeling it's going to be war! I don't really want to spray chemicals, so any suggestions are welcome.

Your coral honeysuckle is so gorgeous in bloom. I imagine the hummers are delirious with joy---and with nectar.

We have coral honeysuckle that grows on the entry arbor to our front garden. Last April or May we tore out the old arbor, made from native cedar limbs in a rustic style, and put in a taller, wider arbor made of pressure-treated lumber. To do that, we had to cut the honeysuckle back to almost nothing in order to remove the old arbor and build the new one. It was slow to recover, likely because we were 2 years into drought and it had suffered from the drought conditions for so long, but it is looking much better this year.

I am not sure what kind of honeysuckle you're wanting to remove, but they're all kind of difficult to eradicate.

We have a native white bush-form honeysuckle way, way back in our woodland and it hasn't spread much in the 10-12 years since I found it growing there. At first, I was unhappy to see honeysuckle back there, fearing it was the highly invasive Japanese Honeysuckle that is so highly invasive and extremely hard to eradicate. Research revealed it was a native honeysuckle called Lonicera albiflora var. dumosa (sometimes listed as Lonicera dumosa) aka as White Shrub Honeysuckle. I like it and would enjoy it more if it wasn't approximately 1000' from the house in a snakey woodland. If that happens to be the one you have, it might not be aggressive and trying to take over your entire property. It mostly grows in shrub form but can run about 10' long on the ground. Mine has run at various times to get more sunlight than it generally gets in our dense woods.

If the one you have and want to remove is the highly invasive Japanese honeysuckle, then good luck getting rid of it without using chemicals. I kinda have my doubts about whether many (or any) chemical herbicide could or would stop it. One way to remove it (and not possible if you are in an incorporated community that doesn't allow prescribed burning) is with a prescribed burn. One prescribed burn in the spring would knock it back somewhat, but it is likely to rebound and you may have to burn it off every year. Or, you could use prescribed burning, if allowed in your area, and then treat the small amount of regrowth that occurs with a herbicide brushed onto it with a foam paintbrush (to keep the herbicide from drifting through the air and killing desirable plants). I am not a huge fan of prescribed burning in or near residential areas because of the potential for a prescribed burn to get out of control and run wild, but it does work to keep some plants more or less under control.

You might have luck cutting it back to the ground and then putting cardboard or sheet plastic on top of it to smother it, and then piling mulch on top at least 6-8" thick to deny it any light. If you have one of the more aggressive forms of honeysuckle, though, it is likely to creep and crawl its way out from underneath the barrier/mulch you use and the pop up in open land nearby.

I'm not fond of herbicides in general, but there is a time when they are the best (or the only) option, and dealing with aggressive honeysuckle that is encroaching on an area where you don't want it might be one of those times.

Dawn

I think it is the Japanese honeysuckle, Dawn. We had a large patch outside our fence, but it has traveled over and into the yard almost to the top of a small hill after I had thinned out some of the trees in the woods. We had several fires a few years back and I was trying to create a brake between our house and the woods (which harbor copperheads and probably timber rattlers....shudder.) I'll have to bite the bullet and treat it. Thank you for the good idea of painting it on. I had been thinking about applying it with a plastic condiment squeeze bottle, but I like your idea better.