Hazel Hedge Plants

For harvesting nuts for eating, have a look at the Cosford.

Hazel, the wild Cobnut, is a superb, naturally bushy hedge plant with pretty, rounded, slightly serrated green leaves. Come the autumn, it forms the palest green hazelnuts, tightly held in an Elizabethan green lace ruff. In late winter or early Spring, the male part of the plant produces resplendent, fluffy yellow catkins which dangle decoratively along the hedge. It grows at a cracking rate, gaining about 45cm every year. If grown separately hazel trees will reach about 10 m.
Browse our range of hedging plants.

Delivery season: Hazel hedge plants are only delivered bareroot during late autumn and winter, approximately November-March inclusive.
Choosing a size: Small plants are cheaper and all-round more convenient for hedges, and will tolerate sub-par aftercare better than larger plants.
If instant impact is your priority, or if you're only buying a few plants for ornamental use, then you may as well use bigger ones to save yourself waiting for a year or two.
All our hedge plants are measured by their height in centimetres above the ground: the roots aren't measured.

Features

Hedge Height: 1m upwards
All soils apart from very acidic.
Classic component of conservation hedging,
Good for coppicing or as a specimen tree.
Colour: Bright Green with lovely autumn tints
Fruit: edible nuts in autumn, catkins in February
Location: Shade tolerant

Growing Hazel Hedging

They're wonderfully easy going, ignoring even waterlogged soil or deep shade (both might be too much together, but the survival rate for 100 hazel planted in the wet shade will be non-zero), they'll thrive on chalk, and acidic soil is fine. The only place Hazel won't grow is on the coast.

History & Trivia

After its first prune immediately after planting (as always with country hedging), it needs little encouragement to thicken out and form a dense screen.

Spacing a Hazel hedge: Standard country hedging: plant at 3 per metre, 33cm apart in a single row, or 6 per metre in a staggered double row, which has a W shape viewed top-down.

Garden Design Ideas

Hazel is a superb hedge plant, and interesting enough to be used as a specimen tree in a park or along a drive.

If your hazel is to be for cropping, you should brut your hazel's branches by snapping, without breaking off, the ends of all the new shoots that were made this year. Count up to six or seven leaves on the new shoot from where it comes out of the older wood and crimp the shoot there by bending it over.
Note that hazel tends to crop poorly on fertile soils.

A pure hazel hedge is a thing of beauty and practicality in its own right. Grow it to be laid for fences, or just trimmed to the correct height - every other year is fine, and better for wildlife.
Because it supports so much wildlife and is resilient as anything, it's ideal for a range of mixed hedging uses. Its golden catkins delight beekeepers, as hazel pollen ripens early in the year.

You can coppice hazel to produce lovely, bendy withies or stakes for use in the garden: perfect for making decorative arches or wigwams to grow gourds, runner beans, or sweet peas over.

Hazel Hedging (Corylus)

Hazel Hedge Plants

Purple-Leaved Filbert Hazel Hedging