Dear civ IV fan 6a, Find the base of the honeysuckle and whack it. Be careful not to injure the buttonbush as you whack the honeysuckle. When new honeysuckle tendrils emerge from the vine's root system, whack them again. With enough whacking, the honeysuckle will eventually give up and die. By whacking, you avoid poisoning our environment with weed killer.

First off, kudos to you for researching and asking in here before planting. That sort of conscientious gardening doesn't seem to be as common these days. To answer your question--if you cherish your garden even a little bit, don't plant this horrible exotic menace! It spreads by runners, literally creating an underground carpet that can sprout even through grass. It laughs at pruning!..."3-4 times a year" will quickly turn into 3-4 times a month. If this wasn't bad enough, it also produces small fruits the birds eat and disperse all over the place. It is truly a tenacious SOB that will never, ever die if you plant it and give it half a year to establish. To get the fragrance but not the invasiveness, try the native goldflame honeysuckle (lonicera x. heckrottii). Niche Gardens has it in Chapel Hill for a reasonable price (www.nichegardens.com; they also mail order). Goldflame isn't quite as strong as japanese; but you can always go to your local woodland edge to smell that invasive monstrosity! It certainly has no place in a garden. Any honeysuckle twines up through lattice and should last as long as the lattice itself. Best wishes for your fragrant garden! Here is a link that might be useful: Japanese Honeysuckle

Rachel, I used Brush Killer, undiluted. There are different brands but it will say 'Brush Killer' on the container. I believe Basic RoundUp is a different product. I see RoundUp now offers a combined mixture that supposedly kills brush, ivy, etc. too. I don't know how well it might work on stem cuttings. When I googled Brush Killer, several items popped up; Bayer Advanced Brush Killer Plus Concentrate, Southern Ag Brush Killer, etc. I think the product I used was made by Bayer. Remember not to dilute the product, just pour a bit of the product into a throw a way cup or something with a broad flat bottom where you can set it down without fear of it overturning, like an empty plastic milk container with the top cut out, anything that will work for you and can be disposed of following your work session. Soak the cotton balls and apply one cotton ball to each freshly cut stem, cover with a plastic sandwich baggie, secure tightly with a strong rubber band and you're done. Be safe. Secure the pets while you're working. Wear good hand and eye protection. I usually doubled the gloves I wore and then threw them away after each work session. Be careful when handling the product. When the weather is warm, I usually noticed wilting within a day and then over time, the plant dies and dries out. I had such a mess of these vines coming up out in my lawn and coming up in my garden beds. Nothing I tried worked until I used the cotton balls. The vines had created a garden nightmare for me. Good luck. You will be so relieved when these things die off. Mary

I have a vine I'm sure is the same as yours. It's runs along just below the surface, putting out fine roots along the big main root, and climbs up any bush it finds, especially azaleas. It always has two adjacent leaves along the vine and never blooms. I finally got this under control, but not yet abolished. After cutting an azalea back so I could reach across it, I reach down with gloves and pull on the vine as low as I can and snap it off or pull up most of the root. By doing this every time you see a shoot, the big underground horizontal root will eventually give up on the azalea and start moving outside the plant area. Always look for those sprouts and pull those up too. Never let the vine tip leaves get any more sun than you can help. It will take a year or two for large infected azaleas but eventually you may eradicate it. I have about 60 azaleas and I have only about a half dozen I still have to watch. No one has been able to identify the vine but iv'e seen it sprouts up in the cleared woods area on the edges of my yard. It may be native to here in South Alabama.