After spending the past week slowly melting in my house and repeatedly standing directly in front of a fan, silently daring it to do a better job, I’ve come to a conclusion: there has to be a better way to keep your home cool.
With summers getting hotter and heatwaves becoming increasingly common, I’ve found myself obsessively researching ways to lower the temperature at home (ideally one that doesn’t demand round-the-clock air conditioning).
Planting trees for shade is an obvious long-term solution, and even houseplants can have a modest cooling effect indoors. But there was one other plant that kept cropping up in my search: coral honeysuckle.
How Coral Honeysuckle Helps Keep Your Home Cool
I’ll admit, the word “honeysuckle” initially made me nervous. Like many gardeners, I’ve heard plenty of horror stories about invasive honeysuckles taking over fences, scrambling up trees, and generally wreaking havoc.
However, coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens) is a very different plant. Native to North America, it is a non-invasive climbing vine that offers something many of us desperately need during summer: shade, shade, gloriously cooling shade.
When grown over a pergola, trellis, arbor, fence, or even around a porch, coral honeysuckle produces dense foliage that can help shield walls, windows, and outdoor seating areas from intense summer sun. And, by reducing the amount of direct sunlight hitting your home, clever climbing plants can help create cooler microclimates around the house thus making outdoor spaces much more comfortable during heatwaves.
What I particularly like about coral honeysuckle is that the vine grows vigorously enough to create cooling cover, but it doesn’t have the aggressive, garden-swallowing tendencies associated with some other climbers.
There’s another benefit, too; coral honeysuckle is deciduous, so while you get welcome shade during the hottest months of the year, the leaves will drop come fall and you won’t be blocking precious sunlight from reaching your home during winter, when every ray feels like a gift.
Now, as someone who is always trying to garden with wildlife in mind, this next feature is the one that really sold me. Because, from spring through summer, coral honeysuckle produces masses of tubular flowers in fiery shades of coral, orange, and red… and hummingbirds absolutely adore it.
Beloved by hummingbirds, this non-invasive honeysuckle promises longlasting blooms aplenty.
The blooms are perfectly shaped for hummingbirds to feed from, but they’re also a magnet for butterflies, native bees, and other pollinators. Better still? The blooms are followed by red berries that can provide food for songbirds later in the season… so it’s a super-plant that supports a thriving ecosystem and cools down our houses. Win!
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If you’re considering planting coral honeysuckle (and you should, obviously!), it performs best in full sun to partial shade and will need a sturdy structure, like one of these beautiful trellis ideas, to climb. Pop it over a patio or near a window to maximize those cooling benefits.
After one too many afternoons sweating in front of an underperforming fan, I’m increasingly convinced that nature may have come up with the best air conditioning system after all.
