Coppicing/pruning hazlenut bushes

[Chocolate]

We have inherited three enormous, old but very healthy hazlenut bushes. Each year the squirrels steal the nuts, so this year I want to be ready and organised. They are much taller than me; the bushes not the squirrels. Also at least 8 metres round; I measured thus far before I dropped and let go of the measuring tape. No I had not had a Christmas drink or two in case you are wondering.

To help this, and improve the yield I wondered if they should be pruned or coppiced? I am slowly pruning many shrubs at this time of year, following local advice and practice. However, everyone is very hazy about my hazlenuts!! I cannot get a definitive, or even helpful answer.

Any advice anyone please? How? When?

Thank you in advance.

[cooperlola]

I have hazels all over my garden.  It does not matter what I do to them or when, they come back beautifully and thrive on my butchery! I am positively the worst gardener on the planet and just hack off the branches whenever they begin to annoy me.  Last winter I cut my 5 metre high one down to about 2 and it's now thickened up beautifully.  Go for it, they seem to survive anything I throw at them.

[Chocolate]

Thanks Cooperlola for your reply. You can't be the world's worst gardener if they have come back "thickened up beautifully".

Do you think it's possible to go down even lower, to say 1 metre? Everything here just explodes upwards in April, but I would feel awful if I was the one 'as what done them in' !!!! They stand as three separate, gigantic bushes in a big open space and I understand that they have been there for well over 30 years. Perhaps I will cut them down this year to the 2 metre height as you have done and see what happens.

Should I thin out as well as cut back/down?  (Actually I am not sure what coppicing really is come to think of it!)

Did your hazels produce nuts after this treatment or have they become just more controllable? I really would like nuts at some point.

Can I cut now do you think? The local vines are being pruned already and the big trees in the towns and villages around here are being pruned of all branches into that 'sore thumb in a bandage' form fashionable in rural France. My elderly French friend who grows fantastic apples, pears etc. has said I must finish all pruning before the end of February to be on the safe side but he doesn't know anything about hazlenut bushes.

You can see that I am getting twitchy! Actually it is good to be gardening in the Winter; something that was never possible in England.