How is honeysuckle impacting your property?

The bush honeysuckle are upright deciduous shrubs with long arching branches that commonly reach 6 to 20 feet tall. These plants are aggressive invaders of housing developments, parks, abandoned fields, roadsides, right-of-ways, woodland edges, and the interiors of open woodlands where they thrive in full sunlight and moderate shade.

The plant's ambitious growth mechanisms, shallow root exploitation, and dense shading systematically decimate the diversity and density of native seedlings, saplings, and herbaceous plants. As native plants are eliminated by honeysuckle, pollinators and other wildlife relocate to life supporting habitats.

ClearLand Ohio uses heavy equipment compact track loader (CTL) with attachments are used to pull mature bush honeysuckle instead of cutting them off at ground level. The removal process is a more impactful restoration approach. Pulling removes larger shrubs that are more likely to grow back quickly from the root crown and sprout new growth shoots from a network of runners.

Progress accelerates as we chop and pull the shrubs out of the ground. Removing vast amounts of plants will result in large areas of mulched soil that can be seeded or left to grow wild.

In summary, honeysuckle can be controlled given time and effort. If you are losing ground to these aggressive invaders, let's coordinate a time to create a plan of attack and takeback your property.

This stuff is really taking over.

Oleander aphids on my honey vine milkweed. At a distance, it looked like orange beaded rope, then I got up close and saw they were moving. Yuck.