Coral honeysuckle

Coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens)

Our native honeysuckle, Lonicera sempervirens, is a great plant.  All four of ours are looking exceptionally good this year.

This one, the most robust, is next to the kitchen door leading out to the main vegetable garden.

Morning sun seems to suit it just fine, as it increases in size every year.

Ruby-throated hummingbirds are a frequent visitor, although I haven't seen any of the early scouts visiting this one so far this year.

It often re-flowers a bit in the fall - providing welcome nectar for the hummingbirds heading south.

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Getting ready for winter break

I managed to tuck the last plants that I had left in small pots into a well-mulched nursery bed this morning. It was a lovely day for it.

They included several small coral honeysuckle plants (Lonicera sempervirens) - freebies from the Garden Writers conference, a small Arkansas bluestar (Amsonia hubrechtii), and a Salvia greggii cultivar and another red Salvia species that the Plant Delights descriptions had really talked up. And which had leaped into my box!

They'll all be a lot happier in the ground while we're traveling during winter break.

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Lonicera and Bignonia

The coral honeysuckle planted next to the gate is thriving. It only had a few (miserable-looking) flowers last year, but my gardening companion confirmed that it enjoys dry weather (like the last few years), so it's seemingly happy now. Or maybe it just needed to get large enough to be suitably reproductive, which actually is a better explanation.

It made a striking picture coming back to the house as the light was waning.

The Bignonia flowering high up in the old water oak next to the driveway -- the clue was a couple of dropped flowers. Otherwise, we wouldn't have noticed it.

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