How to Grow and Care for Winterhazel

How to Grow and Care for Winterhazel Corylopsis spp.

If you want gardening season to start with a beautiful bang, then winterhazels are the shrubs for you.

We link to vendors to help you find relevant products. If you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission.

The first guest to show up at a party can really set its tone. A notorious party animal dials the energy up to 11, while a shy attendant with a board game in hand brings a more laid-back vibe.

Not if the game is Monopoly, though – that’ll ruin relationships in a violent, flip-the-table-over fashion. But I digress…

In the garden, winterhazel’s early-blooming flowers burst with color well before other plants, and forecast that spring is coming soon, in style. After the blooms come the leaves, which add some magnificent mass to the shrub’s multi-stemmed habit.

An all-around delightful addition to the landscape, species of Corylopsis are easy to grow and care for.

To make the process even easier, this guide provides all the cultivation know-how you’ll need.

Here’s what we’re getting into:

Belonging to the Hamamelidaceae family alongside witch hazels and fothergilla, winterhazels include 25 species of deciduous woody shrubs from the Corylopsis genus.

For the most part, they are hardy in USDA Zones 6 to 8, except for C. glabrescens, which is hardy down to Zone 5.

The various winterhazel species originate in the East Asian countries of China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan, where they’re found growing in clearings, within woodlands, and on mountainous slopes.

There aren’t huge differences between the species, so it can be tough to differentiate them. But on the flip side, their similarities makes it easy to spot Corylops