Winter Scent - can't beat Lonicera fragrantissima!

The other day, I was talking about Daphne, and how they bring scent into the garden during the depths of winter.

Well, I should also mention one of my favourite scented shrubs, and that's Lonicera fragrantissima, a wonderful name which just rolls off the tongue!  I am never quite sure if Lonicera is Lonny-sarah, or Lo-Nisser-er... but for this shrub, I definitely go for Lo-Nisser-er, so that it rhymes with fragrantissima...

However you pronounce it, the name really gives you a clue as to its Unique Selling Point - it's fragrant! Very fragrant indeed, but now overpoweringly whiffy: in fact, it's quite elusive, and on a cold morning, you  might think that there is no smell at all... but suddenly, as you turn your head, ah! there it is. 

So what is this guy?

So what is this plant?

If you're not familiar with this one, it's in the same family as Lonicera nitida - the thuggish, evergreen shrub which looks like Box but is fast-growing, suckering, and generally badly-behaved - and Lonicera japonica, or Japanese Honeysuckle, which is the familiar scented climber in our gardens. 

It's a sort of combination of the two - a shrub, but with scented flowers. Best of all, instead of wasting them in summer, competing with all the others, it produces the flowers in winter, as though to lure us out of doors on still, cold days.

Left to its own devices, it will form a rather untidy, loose shrub, which looks - well, let's be honest, it's nothing special in the foliage department, so for most of the year it does not really contribute much to the garden.

But in winter....

Here's one in one of "my" gardens, last week: in glorious full flower!

When I say "last week", for anyone who arrived here in the future and didn't look at the date of the post, it's late Feb/early March, ie still very much in the grip of winter.

Yet here it is, like the Daphne, flowering its socks off, and exuding a wonderful perfume over that part of the garden.

Not a leaf to be seen, but lots of flowers!

As with the Daphne, the standard recommendation is to plant one near to a door, or beside the path, ie in a position where you are likely to walk past it on a winter's day. There's no point tucking it down at the far end of the garden: no, put it up by the house.

Here - right - is another one, which I planted on the main steps down to the front door (not my front door, alas, that of one of "my" gardens), so that the owners would get the benefit every time they walked in or out of the house.

As it's next to the steps, I have pruned it into a semi-standard, ie mostly one single stem, with an explosion of foliage at the top.

Not religiously, not too formal: but I wanted to keep it clear of the path, and this shape meant it was easy to keep it down to a reasonable size. It also puts the majority of the flowers at just under head height, which is perfect for perfume-sniffing!

Looking after these shrubs is really easy: once the flowers have finished, and the leaves are starting to grow, I just prune the whole thing back by a foot or so, err, that's 30cm for you youngsters, or by however much it's grown in the previous year. 

My aim is to keep it more or less to the same size: if they get too big, they get top-heavy, and you certainly get more flowers if you prune them every year, but it's important to do this pruning fairly soon after they've finished flowering.

 And in case you are wondering what they do for the rest of the year... well, as I said, not much really, just some green foliage.

Left - this is the same one as in the first photo, but from a slightly different angle, showing the underplanting of Bearded Iris.

Which is another perfectly valid reason for shaping them, into the "standard" or semi-standard form, because then, even in summer, they are still moderately interesting to look at - and by reducing the bulk at ground level, you gain a planting opportunity at their feet.

And we do enjoy getting an extra planting opportunity!

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