Honeysuckle Dilemma!

Beebop

Hi everyone,
I'm a novice gardener and have this year planted a honeysuckle in a large pot with a support thing (not sure what the technical word would be) The honeysuckle has grown well, although no flowers as of yet, but I've got it quite nicely trained up the support.....
Now my question are these. Can I trim the bits of the plant that have grown taller than the support to encourage it to put energy into flower production, and make the plant look a little neater? Or if I do this will it shock the plant and kill it?
At the moment with the longer bits moving in the breeze it looks like it has a bad comb-over!!!!!
Thanks for any replies to what could well be a very stupid question!

dodiegee

Honeysuckle is pretty indestructible in my experience but you run the risk of cutting this years flowers off by doing it I would have thought . Also I don't think it will encourage it to flower more it will make it bushier - good luck!

Mojisola

If you want a small, tidy plant then honeysuckle is not for you! It needs room to grow - anything from 6m to 10m, depending on the variety.

blossomhill_2

Do you know what type it is? Some are spring flowering, not too pretty but amazing scent when there is not much else around - this would affect when/how you can prune it

tanith

I agree Honeysuckle needs room to spread out , mines just about to flower , depending on the variety you may well trim off this years flowers if you do it now..

Scallycat_2

I have one trained up a trellis on the fence, and it is now spreading out along the top. Its quite bushy but I pretty much trim it back as required.

The bees love it.