Common Hazel

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If you like the unusual and quirky, then you’ll love this curiosity: the corkscrew hazel with its exaggerated, twisted and contorted branches. It is a deciduous shrub, meaning that its dark, tortured and tangled limbs look their best from late autumn through to spring when denuded of leaves. It is much more compact than most other hazel trees, and will tolerate some shade, making it perfect for north-facing gardens or at the back of a shady flower bed. In springtime it produces long tassels of catkins before the green, round foliage appears. The contorted stems and catkins are popular with flower arrangers too.

It makes a superb focus point when grown on its own as a specimen in a small garden with its branches making a wonderful feature when silhouetted against a winter sky. It is also suitable for growing in a pot. However, it also combines well in borders when mixed and contrasted with other small shrubs with spring interest such as Corylopsis pauciflora, rhododendrons or small acers with attractive unfurling young foliage. Plants suitable for under planting include winter aconites, narcissus, snowdrops and hellebores.

It’s ironic that this hazel should have such contorted branches, as the native hazel tree is often grown and harvested for its young, straight sticks, which are used as stakes and plant supports in the garden, particularly for creating wigwams for runner beans to scramble up.

The hazel is naturally a woodland plant, used to growing in the semi-woodland understorey of taller trees, so is tolerant of shade, but will also grow well in full sun. It is slow growing, and although it can eventually reach 5m (16½ft) high, this is only after a good few years and it can be kept in check with regular pruning. In fact it responds well to pruning as it encourages the fresh new growth, which has the best contortions.

ALTERNATIVES

If you’re going to grow a hazel tree with the intention of harvesting its nuts, you will need to safeguard against squirrels, which will quickly devour your potential harvest in a blink of an eye.

The traditional native hazel tree is C. avellana and there are lots of varieties to try, but my favorite is ‘Butler’, having large nuts with a strong flavor. Filberts C. maxima also make great features in the garden, produce larger nuts than hazels and ripen slightly early on the tree. Both hazels and filberts require pollinators to bear large crops of nuts.