Baggesens Gold Shrub Honeysuckle

Lonicera nitida 'Baggesens Gold', Golden Shrub Honeysuckle

This is one of the most popular shrubs for urban planting schemes: you will have seen Baggesens Gold in every exclusive location you can think of, from car parks to roundabouts to outside Tesco's.
When a plant is that popular, it ticks all the boxes: attractive, low maintenance, immune to pollution, tolerant of rough clipping, and for bonus points its small flowers, although not ornamental, are quite fragrant.

It will look good as a formal clipped hedge up to two metres tall. 

Browse our selection of evergreen hedging plants, our full range of hedging, or climbing honeysuckle vines instead.

• Size: under 2m, spreading
• Soil: any
• Use: hedging/topiary
• Single Row: 3 per metre
• Colour: Bright yellow-green
• Features: fast growing, evergreen
• Suitable alternative to Box (Buxus)

Growing Shrub Honeysuckle

Lonicera nitida is a cheaper and quicker way of achieving an evergreen, medium-sized hedge than box, but box is still better for a hedge in the shade. If you want a taller evergreen hedge, have a look at yew.

It grows reasonably quickly, so you will attain your hedge structure fast, but you will need to clip a couple of times during the summer to maintain a crisp profile. 

The twigs are supple when young, and easily trained. The vigorous, bushy habit that makes it popular as an evergreen hedging plant also means that the more you clip, the thicker it grows, quickly camouflaging any supports.

For those who are more relaxed and want a less precise hedge, Lonicera's way of becoming a little shaggy and unkempt if left to its own devices has a charm of its own when surrounded by perennial grasses or in a cottage garden. 

It is very easy to "layer", which is simply pinning low stems to the ground so that they root. Lonicera nitida will typically layer itself if left to its own devices, which helps to keep the base of the hedge really thick and bushy even when neglected.  

Did You Know?

Niels Baggesen (1876-1961) was a Danish nurseryman who started a nursery in Pembury, Wales, which his son John (1904-1985) took over when he retired.
It was John who, while still working for his father, discovered this cultivar growing as a sport on a Lonicera nitida in their nursery shortly after the war, and who later introduced the cypress tree Chamaecyparis lawsoniana 'Pembury Blue', which is also a popular cultivar to this day. 

Growing Lonicera nitida plants:
Your plants aren't demanding; any soil with decent drainage is fine, including chalk, and partial shade is fine. In the wild, these bushes often grow next to streams, so damp places work well. They are fully frost hardy, but they don't like exposed, really windy sites and don't like salt air. Lonicera nitida is suitable for inner city planting.

Prepare your site before planting:

Watch our video on how to plant a garden hedge for the best instruction. The plants in this video are delivered pot-grown, but planting out bareroot stock is essentially the same. Remember to water establishing plants during dry weather for at least a year after planting.

Hedge Planting Accessories:
Prepare your site for planting by killing the weeds and grass. You can buy a hedge planting pack with sheets of mulch fabric and pegs to hold it down. If your soil quality is poor, we recommend using mycorrhizal "friendly fungi" on the roots of new trees and shrubs.