Uses for Hazel in the garden

     A cold day in Shropshire, and I’ve come indoors away from the sleet and snow falling steadily outside.

   I’d been using the thinner, more pliable, stems I’d cut from the old coppice hazel in the corner of the garden, pushing them into the ground around the herbaceous plants in the borders, to support them when they come through. Something I do every three years or so. Some of the stems will also be holding up my broad beans later in the year.

   Staking herbaceous borders in that way used to be one of the more labour intensive jobs in a park in those long ago days when local authorities had direct labour to use intensively, and parks to use them in. Hazel was always the best shrub for the purpose, because it’s strong, but pliable. Sometimes we’d use lime tree stems instead. But they were never as sturdy.

   There had been a lot of lime trees planted along the pavements of the streets in the town where I grew up. Every year, on a rotation, a number of them would have had their crowns reduced by the council’s forestry section and the resulting prunings taken to local allotments to be used as pea and bean sticks by the plot holders. These days I expect the cuttings are shredded in a machine towed behind the lorry and turned into sawdust instead.

   The fibrous outer bark of lime trees used to be used by gardeners for tying bundles and was known as bass or bast. The thicker stems of hazel, below the bits used to support plants, were used as a source of small poles; wattling for hurdles, fences and huts; hoops for casks; for making walking sticks; and as rods for driving cattle. Most of which uses have no place in the modern world.

   In the garden, not needing to be supported by anything, look out for Exochorda x macrantha ‘The Bride’. For about six weeks during April and May its arching branches are wreathed in a cloud of open, white flowers, whilst in autumn, its soft, green leaves turn delicate shades of yellow and orange.