The Amazing Hazel - The Essential Guide to Probably Everything you Need to Know About Growing Hazels - Corylus spp.

Hazel is a multi purpose champion of a plant that is super easy to grow, produces delicious nuts, pliable wood that can be crafted into a variety of products, provides early fodder for bees and an encouraging spectacle when flowering during the mid winter. What more can I say…. a plant so good people started naming their daughters after it.

During this post we’ll take a close look at these versatile plants, including how and where to grow them, growing them in polycultures, how they can be used in agroforestry systems, coppicing hazel, and end the post by introducing some hardy productive and disease resistant cultivars that we are offering from our nursery.

When we speak of Hazel we are generally referring to two species, Corylus avellana and Corylus maxima. The two species produce slightly different shape nuts and take different growth forms. Corylus avellana produce Hazelnuts and Corylus maxima produce Filberts. There are 14–18 species in the Corylus genus but many of the European cu…