Trumpet Creeper honeysuckle, native to North America, is a beautiful vine which can become a gardener’s worst nightmare. This article seeks to examine the benefits and liabilities of Trumpet Creeper Honeysuckle.
Trumpet Creeper Honeysuckle (Campsis Radicans) grows in pretty much any location and can cover an arbor, wall, tree, boulder, and even a house. The orange trumpet-shaped flowers bloom in midsummer and attract hummingbirds. The plant tends to grow more on the wild side but can be pruned to stay within a certain area.
The benefits of the Trumpet Creeper Honeysuckle are plenty. It provides a quick cover of unwanted rocks or debris, and will grow as a shrub if there is nothing for it to climb up. As a shrub, Trumpet Creeper Honeysuckle will get to ten feet, but as a vine will grow fifty feet tall. The leaves provide interest and the plant can be allowed to grow up a chain link fence and just like that, with pruning, the fence becomes a hedge. Another benefit is all the hummingbirds that are attracted to the honey in the flowers.
Trumpet Creeper Honeysuckle can be propagated by stem cuttings, seeds, and root division. Root division is by far the easiest way to propagate the plant. A small piece of the root is all you need and within a few weeks, a shoot will emerge from the root and develop a new plant. The plants also sucker freely out of the ground. These can be dug and replanted.
So in light of all this, would I choose to grow or to recommend the Trumpet Creeper Honeysuckle? I doubt it. The reason why is once you establish a trumpet creeper honeysuckle, it will be there forever. More stubborn than invasive, if the smallest piece of root is in the soil, the plant will keep coming back up. The roots can go down deep into the soil. I dug two feet down and still couldn’t reach the end of a honeysuckle root. And side roots fan out from the bush and start not only new plants, but also new root systems that go down two feet, expanding the entire problem.
So in closing, Trumpet Creeper Honeysuckle has multiple benefits but also is a huge liability. These are things to take into consideration before planting a trumpet honeysuckle. I would only recommend Trumpet Creeper Honeysuckle for a wild area that you want to naturalize; where it doesn’t matter that the honeysuckle will be there for your great grandchildren’s grandkids.
Written by MrDave
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