Witch Hazel
Hamamelis × intermedia
Wants dappled shade and almost no interference — take out a crossing branch and otherwise leave it be.
- Type
- Shrub · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green · Gold and chartreuse
- Flower color
- Yellow · Orange
- Sunlight
- Dappled shade, or a spot that catches only the morning sun.
- Watering
- Soil that stays moist without ever going soggy.
- Feeding
- An annual mulch of leaf mold.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- January
- Pruning
- Very little — take out crossing branches and stop there.
- Jan–Mar Flowering
- Mar–Jul Bud Break
- Jul–Nov Growing
- Nov–Dec Leaf Fall
- Jan–Jan Leaf Fall
- Plant spacing
- 11 ft 6 in
- In-row spacing
- 11 ft 6 in
- Between rows
- 14 ft 4 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody and fibrous
- Working depth
- 12–24 in
- Can reach
- 3 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 17–23 ft across, about 1.5–2× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 20 in of soil
A shallow woody framework with the fine feeding roots in the leaf litter above it. Those feeders are mostly under the outer half of the canopy rather than against the stem, which is where water and feed should go.
Named varieties are grafted, usually onto the common witch hazel, and the rootstock suckers. Anything coming from below the graft union comes out at once, or it will take the plant over.
The habit is Witch Hazel’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Generally trouble-free No notable pest or disease problems when grown in the right conditions — one of the easy ones.
Snowdrops, Hellebores, Winter aconites
Shrubs, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com