What is this plant??

[AlastorMoody]

Firstly forgive me - I have zero idea what to do with anything gardening wise! Am just wondering what this monster of a plant is climbing up my drainpipe?

We moved in about 6 months ago and haven't really done much in the garden apart from weeding.

This is our first house (that we own) and so we are at a loss as to what it is and what to do with it! We've got a ladder and some long handled secateurs but not sure what else we need and how to prune it back?

Update - DMIL thinks it's honeysuckle! Is she right?

It probably is.

Where do you want to prune it to?

You can just chop it back so that it is closer to the house by cutting it back to the space you want it to inhabit and keep it trimmed with shears.

Personally I would chop it to the ground and then train the new shoots as they come to where I want them. but I am a bit of an anti-honeysuckle type person. I wouldn't want that beast hanging onto my drainpipes.

There's a fab app called plant snap, and you send a picture and they identify it for you.

Would honeysuckle be that leafy by mid April?

Op has it been that leafy over winter?

Thanks all! Doreen it's worrying me that it could pull the pipe down if not pruned back... It seems to have doubled in size overnight DP is deathly scared of spiders and is convinced that's where they're all going to live in Autumn, so need to do something about it now before he starts refusing to put the bins out (they're down the side of it in a passage)

Stubble that sounds amazing! Downloading now! There are many plants I can't identify but I want to actually be good at this gardening malarkey at some point.

Head absolutely no idea! Does it not normally do that? It's looked like this, albeit smaller, since August. It got berry type things on it not that long ago. Kind of purpley black.

Yep honeysuckle, mine is that leafy now. It does grow rather, um, strongly

It gets lovely scented flowers, but if it is too big then just chop it back hard. Honeysuckles are pretty indestructible.

Mewling I was hoping it might be, when do they flower? I might just start hacking at it and see what happens

I think it's some sort of ever green clematis but I don't really know. .

It is honeysuckle, we have that growing up one of our drainpipes too. It's almost impossible to kill, we have cut it back to the ground before but it resurrects itself!

Oh gawd, I thought it would be so simple! Cut it down, job done. Would it be easier to send DP on a fear factor type spider course?

If you want rid you will have to dig it out. If you want it and don't want it up your drainpipe, then you cut it at the roots, and train the new shoots up something like a trellis and keep it off your drainpipe.

They are very hard to kill. I've tried loads of times.

Update! Will have to name change after this as it will out me but we did it! Took a morning of work and we now need a skip but here's the result...

Thanks to all of you for your advice!

For a scale of the size of the job, here's the leftovers. We found three old birds nests in there too

You do realise some climbers love a good pruning. Its going to come back bigger and stronger

This is going to be what your house looks like next year.

Quook no! No no no! I feel like this lovely scented flowering plant is going to become some dark evil thing that I'll have to battle for the next five years. How are you going to tackle that? Is it even your garden?

Single man lived here before us and it's like he's set us up for a laugh - he's also planted ivy in random places. Has left us with a rather nice acer tree though. But in a really inconvenient place!

Ps now feeling re my is that your garden comment. I can see that it's not

Do you have a garden bin? I wouldn't skip that - I'd use the brown/green/whatever bin to get rid of it. House looks good though well done.

OP. Lol, don't worry the photo was lifted from the Internet.

I do have some fast growing honey suckle that's fairly rampant but I love a good hack back so I can keep on top of it.