PlantFiles: Witch Hazel
Hamamelis x intermedia 'Arnold Promise'

'Arnold Promise' witch hazel is the first of this fine species that I had the pleasure to become acquainted with (and plant for myself) back in the 1980s.

I have enjoyed this large-growing shrub to small tree sized plant and its copious late winter and early spring fragrant bright yellow blooms. The only downside to 'Arnold Promise' performance is that it often overlaps in bloom time with the ubiquitous forsythia around central KY. Given the choice, most gardeners know what a forsythia is, and nurseries will sell them a thousand to each one witch hazel.

This is a fine plant, but it is rapidly being superceded by newer selections that bloom earlier in the winter when there is little to no competition.

I look forward to the late winter flowers every year! Blooms around Mid February around here-sometimes a bit earlier, and lasts about 4 weeks.

Received The Royal Horticultural Society, Award of Garden Merit (AGM) in 2005.

This is probably the most well known witch hazel and rightly so; the flowers are among the largest of the witch hazels and are a brilliant yellow. It was a selection made at the Arnold Arboretum, Mass., in 1963. This cultivar also has excellent fall colour.