By Piers66
Surrey,
United Kingdom 
Can anyone identify this climber (honeysuckle?)
Hello,
I've got a climber in my garden that grows rather pathetically every year, puts out a load of tendrils with leaves in spring and then looks rather bare for the rest of the year.
It hadn't flowered for many years, so last year I cut it down to about 18 inches to see what would happen. To be honest this was going to be its last year before I ripped it up and put something less useless in its place.
However, it's finally flowered! It might have been the pruning, or perhaps some fertiliser I threw around last year, or maybe just this spring's unusual weather. Anyway, I've now seen a few flowers and having thought it was a clematis now wonder if it could be a honeysuckle of some kind.
Any ideas what it is, and any suggestions for how I should look after it to encourage a better show in future?
Thanks,
Piers.
2 Jun, 2018
Answers
Thanks for the ID.
It's in a spot that gets some direct sun, but not for more than a couple of hours a day, my garden's a bit overshadowed by a couple of large sycamores.
Any suggestions on how I should look after it to encourage more growth / more flowers?
4 Jun, 2018
Fertilising and cutting back occasionally in winter is about all you can do - I grew this one years and years ago, dug it out after five years, drove me nuts - it did exactly what yours has done, although by five years old, it had really bushy growth right at the top, with bare stems beneath. I just didn't like its tendency to throw out long, bare shoots everywhere and its lack of a decent show of flowers, and the flowers are pretty small really. I changed mine for Lonicera serotina - that and belgica are both dutch flowering honeysuckles which give better results, though only 2 hours sun a day might not be enough. Lonicera brownii tolerates a bit more shade, but I found that to be quite variable in performance.
5 Jun, 2018
Definitely Honesuckle - probably Lonicera japonica 'halliana'. Maybe its not getting enough sun to grow well
2 Jun, 2018