Plant identification question

No. But I don't know all the northwest thriving plants..

Thanks for looking in, osso.

The stems looked kind of like this:

Harry Lauder Walking Stick - a selected form of hazelnut.

You're right!!!!



Thanks so much.

I really want to get one.

It's why they pay me the big bucks.
You probably saw a grafted standard. They take the mutant curly part and graft it on a single stem of the straight species. Many nurseries carry them. Be aware - they look like a weird droopy "Cousin It" when the leaves come out. They are beautiful in a winter landscape with snow or ice covering the branches and are often used as a winter focus in the landscape, but in the summer - not so lovely.

Harry in summer:

Wow! I've never seen one of those. Ay, caramba!

I'm with osso -- Ay, caramba!

Now that I know what it is I need to think of where to plant it. I saw it in a really overgrown yard that faced west. Do you now off-hand if it does okay in shady areas or how big it gets?

12' good sun, well drained. commonly filbert contorta in the north west.

Thanks, dys.

12 feet? The one I saw was in a pot. A big pot, but a pot.

You can bonsai them. Keep them pruned and fertilized and you can grow them in a large pot. Take them out of the pot every couple of years and trim the roots, replant. A popular way to treat them is to wheel them out like sculpture for the winter garden and then hide them in the summer when they look like Cousin It.

well, you cut off the tap root and keep it shrub size in a large pot.

I should put it back in my experimental tree sculpture garden!

I've got a one tree I've been goofing with for two years.... a maple that someone cut down that sends up shoots. I trimmed most of the shoots and then started braiding some of them, and twining them together. It looks pretty cool and it won't be a catastrophe if it dies off.

There is another tree part -- a thing my neighbor cut off that sits in the midddle of our fence line -- that stands about 6' high. I started training runners across the top of the fence this year, hoping to make sort of a living screen between our houses.

Both experiments are just for kicks. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Both of these are summer sculpture trees so a winter sculpture tree would be a nice addition.

I can probably manage that technical feat!

I don't know much about plants or gardening but it doesn't seem to make much difference in Oregon... you throw stuff at the ground and it grows.

I'm a fan of living willow fences:

That's so cool!

How many years does something like that take?

Wow.

It starts to look like something in two years and should look great in five. Takes some patience and a lot of pruning. You can find instructions on-line if you search " how to make a living fence willow" or anything like that.

I don't know where I could possibly use something like that.

But it really makes me lament my neighbor's awful, out of control, laurel hedge. It's easily 25, shaggy feet high. When we first moved in it had taken over about 7 feet of our yard with scraggly appendages.

Last spring I finally just started sawing branches trying to reclaim my yard.

As I pruned it back I found that the shape of the trunks is really quite elegant and I have since seen a neighborhood "hedge" where the lower part is pruned clean while allowing the top to grow. It really looks kind of tropical.

I've even offered to prune their side, showing them photos of the cool "hedge".

He's an uber-snob though and isn't willing to listen to me about such things.

Holy crap! Foot high versions of those hazelnut trees were $100.

Too rich for my blood.

But I found something else I liked that had that twisty branch thing and it was only $20. A flying dragon citrus tree: