Hazel tree dilemma - help!

[Pinkyxx]

We have 3 very large & productive Hazel trees in our garden standing the height of the roof. There is a lot of ivy growing up / through all of them. They are quite beautiful and produce an abundant crop of hazelnuts every year - I love them!

Herein lies the problem.. one is at risk of enroaching on the roof.. we're talking leaf on the end of branch at the moment.. We got a tree surgeon to look at them thinking they could be pruned back. He insists they must be completely cut right down to no more than 1.2 meters!!!!

I'm devastated, all the branches will be gone and we will lose a vast amount of privacy in our garden.

Hoping someone may have some experience in this area and can share less drastic alternative!

I'm no expert, I'm sure someone else will come along with more confidence but a couple of decent sources say you can prune a third of the tree at a time and a different third next year (or two or three years) later.

There’s tree surgeons and tree surgeons. You might find someone who can suggest less severe solutions. But you will more than likely have to lose height on them …

I'd get another opinion. I personally would just cut back the branches of the one that is too close. But I really hate the way people cut trees down at the drop of a hat and will do anything to avoid cutting back a tree.

Hazel trees need a good hard cut back every decade or so to stay at their most productive. I cut about 10ft off mine a couple of years ago to use the branches for fencing, and it's bushier than ever now.
Hazels in managed woodland are Coppiced or pollarded to keep them healthy.

I'd reduce by a third too.

But they really do benefit from a hard cut back every now and again. They will grow!

Thanks so much to everyone who replied!!

The trees aren't young, they are several decades old, each with s thick trunk, and very bushy. They aren't the spindly kind where you have lots of think trunks if that makes sense. We suggested pollarding (i.e. cutting at least 3-4 meters off but leaving the trunk + some of the branch network) but the tree surgeon said you can't do that with a Hazel and it won't 'work' - he seems intent on lopping the each tree off to a stump.

Really worried that by cutting off all the branches we'll have spindly growth from just the trunk and no nuts for years and years :-(

The conventional way to deal with hazels is to coppice as he described. It rejuvenates them, but the main purpose is to get lots of straight wooden poles, it’s not done for the health of the tree.. They are tough brutes, so I would simply cut back the offending branches.

I know a hazel tree which is at least 30 years old and never been coppiced - it’s a very fine specimen.

Why does he say it won't work? I mean he's right from the point of view they'll grow back with more vigour, so you'll be looking at cropping back every few years, where as if he takes them right back, you can forget about them for several years. But our two hazels are only chopped back roadside every year, and garden side when they start taking too much light from my veggie patch! we discovered dormice were enjoying our nuts so my trees are very much sacrosanct!

Hazels evolved millions of years before there were people around to coppice them.

Just prune out a few of the older branches, which will let light in and encourage new growth; and trim back the encroaching ones to a suitable side branch. That way you will keep the shape and not end up with that awful chopped-off stumps look so beloved of some so-called tree surgeons.

And I would do your best to tame some of the ivy as well, don't let it get too out of hand. It gets incredibly heavy, and makes it far more likely for trees to be blown down in high winds. Sucks up a load of moisture and nutrients as well.

Thanks to all. He wasn't really clear why it wouldn't work to only partially cut them back other than the risk of not doing it is that they will fall down eventually owing to the Ivy (which admittedly has got out of control - its bloody hard to curtail that stuff!)

Rule of thumb is that if a side branch is more than a third of the thickness of the main branch, it will take over as a main branch after you’ve pruned out the original main branch. If less than a third, you will probably get a mass of “water shoots”, thin spindly straight twigs.