The best trees and shrubs to grow for decorative winter stems | House & Garden

Witch Hazel '‘Amanon’ 'at Kalmthout Arboretum in Belgium

An effective way to inject colour and character into the barren winter garden is to grow shrubs and trees that have exciting stems during the cold months. Some are simply on show because their leaves have dropped, while others develop incredible colour as a reaction to the low temperatures.

The most eccentric of the lot is the corkscrew hazel (Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’), which has wonderful spiralling branches. Resembling a mass of curled serpents, it looks like a tree bewitched. In early spring, it is hung with catkins, before heart-shaped green leaves unfurl; but this oddity is at its most glorious in winter, when the knotted stems stand out, bare, against the winter sky. It was discovered in a hedge in Gloucestershire in 1863 by plantsman Henry Reynolds-Moreton, 3rd Earl of Ducie, and, subsequently, propagated. One of the first offspring was given to the late gardener and writer E. A. Bowles, who planted it in his garden at Myddelton House in Middlesex and helped to popularise it. Describing the plant as ‘a tangle of crooks and corkscrews from root to tip’, it became one of the key specimens in an area of his garden known as ‘the Lunatic Asylum’, which was reserved for the barmiest-looking plants he could find. The twisted hazel found even more fame in the early 20th century when music-hall comedian Harry Lauder began using a curly branch of it as a cane. Still today, one of the plant’s common names is Harry Lauder’s walking stick.

Corkscrew hazel

The corkscrew hazel is a large deciduous shrub or small tree, which rarely produces nuts. It can be grown in a large pot initially, since it is slow-growing; eventually, it should be planted out in well-drained neutral