Corkscrew hazel and rose

jonathan.cole

We bought a house in October last year. There is an established corkscrew hazel and pink rose which are growing through each other.

The hazel looks unhappy and has had curled and discoloured leaves all year. The rose grows through the hazel (see attached) obscuring the corkscrew shapes.

I am really quite an amateur gardener, so advice would be welcome. Ideally I'd like to save both plants, but make the shape of the hazel much more visible.

Borderline

Check to see if the rose is actually growing from around the base of the Corkscrew Hazel. If so, you will need to dig up the area to remove. It could be trained to go over your Hazel from another area. If trained, you can prune them right back.

Corkscrew Hazel leaves tend to look limp and curl most of the time, and not a great feature. They look better in the winter time. I wouldn't worry too much about it now, since it is autumn, the leaves will by dying out. 

Kitty 2

I have a corkscrew hazel and agree with Borderline about the leaves. It's an ugly looking plant in full leaf, but looks great bare in winter and with catkins in spring. Mine is in a pot so I can shift it out of sight in summer.

The curled leaves are perfectly normal, the discolouration could've been down to this summers high temps.

purplerallim

The leaves look totally normal to me. I can see you will have a problem separating them as both large plants. Also the hazel may be using the rose as a prop and may break under it's own weight. You may also have strait stems growing from the hazel which will sap it's strength, so after the leaves fall take out any long strait branches you find, and maybe the top of the rose, and see how that looks. Hope this helps. This is my one year old tree, and the nuts it produced this year

punkdoc

All perfectly normal.

Obelixx

Yes, it's a twisted hazel and everything is twisted, not just the stems which, as others have said, look really good in winter when bare.  I expect the rose is there to make it a bit more attractive when in leaf.

jonathan.cole

Thanks for your replies everyone!

So the hazel is healthy; that's good news. The twisted branches are never really visible because of the rose, but I will take the advice and trim out the straight stems and a bit of rose and see how we do over winter.

Cheers!

Obelixx

Take out all the straight stems on the hazel right back to the base or it will revert and you'll lose all the twisted bits as the straight stems have more vigour.

treehugger80

i'd be tempted to move the rose, cut it back to 6 inches tall now and dig around the root ball, lift with as much soil attached as possible and move elsewhere

purplerallim

If that is the rose roots in front of the tree then cut back and retrain over the wall, that way tree roots won't be disturbed.  If they are closer then the rose may have to be sacrificed so as not to damage the tree. This tree is very slow growing, so any loss of branches or root damage will take some time to recover.

Marlorena

Well they don't exactly go well together do they? neither enhances the other in my view... I would move the rose if you are able to do so, it shouldn't pose too many problems, it's not huge, and move it across to the other wall I can see, where there is bare soil...  
..Should you do this, I disagree with an earlier post which advises to cut back to 6 inches... not at this time of year... but to leave as much cane on as possible, and leave pruning to the Spring...