This week... Witch hazel

Add colour and fragrance to your garden in winter and early spring with a witch hazel

- GRAHAM RICE

MANY flowering shrubs have colourful flowers, but few produce their flowers in winter and early spring when there’s often little colour. Combine that with a sweet scent that hangs in the air on still days, together with deciduous leaves that turn orange in autumn, and the witch hazel (Hamamelis) becomes an essential plant for so many gardens.

Witch hazel is also exceptionally winter hardy, grows well anywhere in the country and is generally tolerant of a range of different growing conditions.

Colourful impression

As they are slow growing at first, it may take witch hazels a few years to make a diet bright and colourful impression in the garden, but as they mature they develop a striking branch structure with the flowers carried in clusters in winter and early spring. Given space to develop, a witch hazel is an essential winter shrub.

The witch hazel extract sometimes used medicinally is distilled from the leaves, bark or twigs of an American species, Hamamelis virginiana.

How to recognise witch hazels

THE flowers are unusual, with four slender twisted petals up to 3⁄4in (2cm) long creating a rather spidery look. Most varieties have gold or yellow flowers, although varieties with orange, coppery or slightly reddish flowers are now seen more often. In the autumn after flowering, the seed pods split explosively and fling the seeds up to 30ft (9m) from the parent plant.

From Asia come two winter or spring flowering witch hazels – Hamamelis mollis and Hamamelis japonica – with large flowers and, in the best varieties, a strong fragrance.