Hamamelis Week

With the Hamamelis back in flower in week 2011/10, we are reflecting on how it and its like can be better situated. In the bleak, washed-out colours of a winter landscape, it really needs a background of dark or saturated colour to stand out. In the midst of a motley, moss-addled lawn, it looks like more of the same. Hamamelis looks effective against a clear blue sky, and against a background of lush green yew. We may plant one in front of the Thuja on the front boundary, where it would at least cheer pedestrians as they pass, and perhaps an underplanting of Eranthis hyemalis, now coming out, would add to the delight.

After the melt

And suddenly the snow melts, and spring begins in Week 2010/11. With the last piles of shovelled snow still standing after the three-month whiteover of the 2009-2010 winter, the crocuses are up, the white "snowbells" are about to open, the wonderful yellow Eranthis hyemalis are forming a carpet in a neighbour's garden (top) and the Hamamelis rushes into blossom in six bare days (bottom).

The mauve crocus seems to be the the most stubborn of these early bloomers: it grew (from seed?) in a ploughed-over bed, sending up shoots 5-centimetre within two days of the snow briefly melting in 2010/09, and surviving a dumping with 25 centimetres of fresh snow two days later.

Hamamelis Week

With snow still lying on the grass beside, Hamamelis comes into blossom in week 2009/09, about seven days after a brief spell of sunny days with temperatures 3 or 4 degrees above zero have tripped its biological switch. Everything else around the witch hazel looks bleak, and Phormium tenax, which for the first time I have left in the ground during our Zone 8 winter, looks rotten and ruined. I should have known: others who have tried to keep this outdoors in northern Germany have reported similar problems. We have longer cold periods than the west coast of England, where these New Zealand flaxes do quite well. Under the trees elsewhere in the garden, Galanthus nivalis appears by mid-week and the shoots of daffodils are already 5 to 10 centimetres above the soil. By the end of the week, spring is in the air: the redcurrant looks close to blossom, magnolia buds are looking pregnant and neighbours' hazels finally have their catkins. These grow longer by the day, and a particularly fine example in a front yard at P---weg 29 has hazel braids almost 10 centimetres long. A stand of very four or five low, cherry-like bushes, perhaps Viburnum farreri or Viburnum bodnatense, at P---weg 31 have also blossomed in a delicate mix of red and pink.

Hamamelis Week

In week 2008/08, our Hamamelis x 'Jelena' witch hazel is out, but later than other people's yellow cultivars in the next street. Hamamelis is a shrub one barely notices the rest of the year. It is planted for this one mad burst of elegance in the winter cold.