A tale of two honeysuckles…

I built this trellis and planted two varieties of honeysuckle in front of it, maybe 7 years ago, thinking they would mingle and mix. One of them, a Japanese variety, took off, and the other barely grew: after 3 years it had scarcely grown from the potted size I bought it at. Then I began pruning it. This seemed counter intuitive: it had much less foliage than I wanted so why cut what little was there? But it stimulated more growth than it subtracted. And a few years later, the two varieties are now of a comparable size in my hedge! I have a calendar reminder of what time of year to go prune and I do it diligently. Lessons learned!