Being a practical sort of person I have tried to acquire plants that have more than one virtue. By that I mean if I would like a beautiful flower I try to choose a perfumed variety.
I decided to plant a green hazelnut on the road side of the garden as they grow quickly to provide screening and also produce hazelnuts.
I decided a purple hazelnut would also work well to give some different foliage colour in spring time.
They are not such abundant nut producers but given I had the other trees I felt I would be amply provided for.
This year the crop has not been plentiful and I have worked out why.
But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
With apologies to Rabbie Burns
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_a_Mouse for the full version and translation, if need be.
a french garden 
The dear animals, right? I remember the time the hens broke into the tomatoes….
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You gotta love ’em (I think.) 🙂
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There’s always next year! 😉 Our squirrels returned this spring… last year there weren’t any in our garden, and we had lovely hazelnuts for the first time ever – maybe the last time too!
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The squirrels are a new “addition” to our garden. The ones I spotted are red ones which I thought preferred areas with conifers. In Scotland it was mainly the red ones I saw but in the south of England it was mainly the grey American imports.
We got most of our hazelnuts outside the garden last year so it looks as if we are going to have to forage again this year. Amelia
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Amelia, I think your squirrel is not the one to blame… squirrels split the nut open from the top… split being the operative word… round/oval holes like these are the work of mice and voles. The hammered holes [the smaller ones] look like the work of a greater-spotted woodpecker or a jay who didn’t think it worth continuing.
We’ve had very similar broken open nuts.
The Red Squirrels here in France are much more cosmopolitain about where they feed… the reason for them being mainly in pine woods in the UK is that the greys are not successful there so the reds survive.
We haven’t had any red squirrels here this year… some over-enthusiastic river bank work has destroyed the natural corridors for the moment… hopefully they’ll be back as the cover re-grows. Fortunately, we haven’t had a colony establish itself along our stretch… there wouldn’t have been a way for them to get to other feeding grounds and there wouldn’t have been enough food in our half kilometer of riverbank… it is mainly ash and they cannot live on ash keys alone.
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I saw the red squirrel in the garden and I found the eaten nuts – you are correct, it is very unsubstantiated evidence. What is more we do have jays in the garden who came to the plum tree earlier for the plums and we do have woodpeckers. I can only say I have seen the squirrel heading out of the purple hazel and I suspect his motives for being there. I will examine our empty shells more closely from now on.
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Amelia, I’ve just put up a posting about voles and tracks and signs on Aigronne Valley Wildlife and linked it to this.
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Whoever the culprits, I like the way they neatly empty the shells leaving them mainly intact. One of the nice things about jersey is they still have reds (no greys). And the locals take care of them. We saw ropes joining treetops over busy roads and squirrels using them.
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What a lovely idea! I’d love to see squirrels doing a tightrope act over the road.
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I would like to have captured a shot of them but I only saw them from the car.
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