We have a love/hate relationship with bush honeysuckle in our area. We appreciate its ability to screen our neighbors, stabilize hillsides, and shade our yards.

At the same time, its aggressive growth habits have a negative impact on native plants and wildlife. 

Why is this invasive plan so bad for our native ecosystems and environment? Here are a few reasons:

• Birds and wildlife love to eat the berries and carry them everywhere. Unfortunately, those berries are not nutritious enough to support birds, especially during migration. 

• Native insects may not use this plant as a food source. When native insect populations decline, birds lose another food source.

• The rapid growth rate of honeysuckle crowds out new trees that would provide higher, safer nesting areas for birds and other wildlife.

• These very large shrubs block sunlight for native plants, making it hard for native plants to gain a foothold in the ecosystem. When native plants can’t thrive, pollinators, wildlife, and soil quality all suffer negative effects.

• They are mosquito havens. Generally where there is dense honeysuckle, other invasive vines like wintercreeper and English ivy set up shop as ground cover. The shade from the honeysuckle and groundcovers creates a damp, protected environment that allows mosquitoes to breed in large numbers.

For all these reasons, we see honeysuckle removal as a win-win for your yard’s ecology and your enjoyment of it. 

Honeysuckle removal opens up your yard and provides an opportunity to take advantage of the precious space you have rather than let it be an impenetrable barrier that walls you off from half your yard. 

Depending on the scale of the honeysuckle removal project in question, you can approach the removal process in a few ways. 

For smaller-scale sites you can cut the stumps and then grind them out. There are couple factors that will make this a good choice or not:

• If it’s on a steep slope, we will generally not remove stumps as they help hold the hillside soil in place while new native plantings get established.

• Equipment access is also a factor in this decision.

For larger sites, we will cut the honeysuckle down with equipment and then spray an organic herbicide onto the fresh cut. This takes less time as we will leave the stumps intact.

There is usually some grow-back the next year from some of the stumps (we will usually schedule a follow up visit to cut back the weak new growth or coach a client on how to do it themselves). This grow-back is to be expected and happens when using conventional herbicides as well. With persistence, it is possible to eradicate these invasive plants.  

Interested in removing honeysuckle from your yard? Check out our Honeysuckle Removal packages or get in touch to discuss your needs. We can help you remove honeysuckle and also design a native plant palette to replace this pesky plant with an ecologically beneficial landscape.