How to plant and grow hazelnuts

Grow hardy cobnuts and filberts for perennial food

On our allotment I’ve started one of a few new areas on our farm for 2025, a little hazel nuttery with three cobnut bushes. We have other areas of wild hazelnuts on the farm, but I wanted to optimise yield with a careful new selection.

Cobnut is one of horticulture’s annoying jargon words, they are just hazelnuts from the species Corylus avellana, the wild tree seen growing all around Europe, including the UK. You’ll also come across the name filbert, which is the name for the other hazelnut Corylus maxima, which originates from Yugoslavia but has been bred for centuries all round Europe. Why hazelnuts need an additional two names when they are sold as hazelnuts, I don’t know.

The main difference to food growers is the husk, the green protective papery bit around the nut, which is longer around filberts covering most of the nut. This means more hassle removing the husk on harvest - I ain’t got time for that. I opted for the hardiest and most productive cultivars of the cobnut, Corylus…