The Blooming Tree That's Perfect For Adding Shade And Beauty To Your Yard

When it comes to choosing the right plants for your landscaping, it's important to consider both visual appeal and functionality. With the Chinese hazelnut tree (Corylus fargesii), you can enjoy ample shade alongside edible fruit and eye-catching flowers. You'll get the best of both worlds with a flowering tree that benefits the environment. 

Chinese hazelnut trees can grow up to 140 feet tall, and their broad branches bloom early in the year with flowers, sometimes as early as March. These characteristics make it a perfect shade tree for hot yards. But it's not just great for shade, it's also beautiful with its small bloooms and notable catkins, the reddish-brown male flowers. To top it all off, Chinese hazelnut trees also produce edible fruits, in this case hazelnuts, that ripen for picking in late summer.

Overall Chinese hazelnut trees offer a blend of aesthetic qualities while still remaining functional in your garden, helping maximize space to make the most out of your yard. If you've decided this is the best nut tree for your yard and want to grow it yourself, you do so either by picking up a sapling where available or growing it from seed. But first, it's important to learn how to care for your tree to help it thrive.

Chinese hazelnut trees are a hardy variety, with resistance to a range of diseases and insects, including Eastern Filbert Blight, a fungal infection that can affect many of its peers. They can also hold up well to drought and heat, although they do prefer moist, well-draining soil. If there's one thing to keep in mind when picking the right spot for your Chinese hazelnut tree to grow, it's wind. Excessive wind can slow growth for your tree, so you can make sure to provide plenty of shelter from harsh winds. Aside from that, this tree can grow well in USDA Hardiness zones 5 through 8, as well as in both full sun and partial shade.

One thing to keep in mind before adding a Chinese hazelnut tree to your yard is that it does produce nuts that humans and animals alike can enjoy. While this may be an added bonus, it does serve as an attractant for any nearby wildlife. As a result, time under your shade tree may be spent alongside a variety of hazelnut-eating critters, such as bears, rodents such as chipmunks and mice, raccoons, and more. Deer and squirrels are also known to dine on the bark of this tree. To help reduce the likelihood of any wildlife visitors, you may need to regularly clean any fallen nuts, which means this may not be the most low-maintenance tree for your backyard.