Heavenly hellebores

Lynda Hallinan admires all the new hybrid hellebores in garden centres – and finds out how to make their flowers last longer in a vase.

Be afraid for your budgets, my green-fingered compatriots, for fiscal peril awaits you (and me). This month, a raft of new, increasingly alluring hybrid hellebores start arriving in full bloom at garden centres. With fancy frills and exotic speckled petals, they are quite irresistible – and that’s saying something because I find all hellebores, old and new, impossible to resist.

Could hellebores, also known as Lenten or winter roses, be the most perfect garden plants on the planet? Let’s assess the evidence.

First up, they flower right through winter, gallantly donning their party frocks when the rest of the landscape is barren. They are beautiful in bud, full bloom and swollen-bellied with seed, when each flower produces a sculptural pregnant pod that extends their season of interest from weeks to months.

They thrive in full or partial shade but can also tolerate sunny gardens, though the foliage can scorch a little. Once established, they’re droughttolerant and frost doesn’t bother them in the slightest, nor does snow.

Hellebores are perennial, coming up as everything else goes down, however in frost-free areas, where they flower no less beautifully, they behave as evergreens and benefit from an annual early winter haircut to take off the old foliage just as the new flower buds emerge. Plus their foliage – deep green and glossy or marbled with silver veins – is attractive in its own right, forming a tidy, compact clump. Above: A collection of hybrid hellebores – doubles, picotees, cupped and pointypetalled forms – from my Hunua garden.

Did I mention they’re a doddle to grow? Hellebores are so easy-care that it takes a concerted effort to kill them.

(A few years ago, an accidental mix up between the farm and nursery sprayers at Clifton Homestead in South Otago, where Kate and Ken Telford specialise in hybridising hellebores, saw their prized plants drenched with the herbicide Tordon. They did ultimately survive, Kate says, but they went a bit mutant first.)

In humid regions, fungal diseases can check the vitality of hybrids bred from Helleborus niger, which prefers a cool climate, while aphids can cause contorted growth and twisted buds, but the damage is purely cosmetic. Mice also nibble the buds, Kate adds.

Five years ago, I planted dozens of hybrid hellebores between bluebells and self-sown forget-me-nots under the grove of silver birches at the end of our driveway. Despite unseasonably wet winters and summer droughts, I’ve never lost a plant – quite the opposite, in fact. They’ve spawned thousands of seedlings that, if I could be bothered to prick out and pot them up, could fill a paddock with freebies. Instead, they crowd around their parents, begging for my attention, for that’s another thing about hellebores: they’re promiscuous cross-pollinators.

Over the past 50 years, breeders have cherry-picked the best traits of the 20 or so recognised species, combining the freckles of Helleborus orientalis with the flounce of Helleborus torquatus , the only naturally occuring double. Similarly, the tall Corsican hellebore, Helleborus argutifolius, which is easy to grow, was crossed with its cousin Helleborus lividus, which has handsome veiny foliage but is hard to grow, to produce the attractive and easily grown Helleborus x sternii.

Helleborus x sternii was then bred with Helleborus niger to create ‘Eric Smithii’, which was used to breed many well known varieties like ‘Moonshine’.

Like hydrangeas, hybrid hellebores are having a hipster moment, as plant breeders (particularly in Europe) play with their parentage to produce larger, flatter flowers, feminine doubles and a wider range of colours, from white through yellow to apricot, purple and slate grey. Many of these new releases suit smaller gardens as they have been selected for their flower power in pots.

German hybridisers at Heuger have developed numerous exciting new varieties including ‘Ice Breaker Fancy’, ‘Jasper’ and ‘Jacob Classic’, all now available here in the KiwiGold range.

These Helleborus niger x orientalis crosses flower in their first year; are earlier to bloom, starting in May; have upward, outward facing buds; and eye-catching foliage. I put in a row of white-flowered ‘Jacob Classic’ last winter and its finger-like leaves remind me of dwarf pseudopanax.

British-bred hybrids dominate the Living Fashion range, which includes ‘Penny’s Pink’, ‘Anna’s Red’ and ‘Molly’s White’, with ruffled ‘White Tutu’ due for release here in August.

Closer to home, the Telfords have been breeding hellebores at Clifton Homestead since their eldest daughter Bryony, now 27, was born. (A scientist, Bryony caught the hellebore bug too, investigating their DNA as part of a genetics project at university.)

Having started with imported seed from Europe, Kate and Ken chose the most promising parents and, each year, hand-pollinate their best blooms inside a bee-proof propagation house.

Their mail-order nursery offers elegant yellow and apricot hybrids, plus pretty picotees, not to mention almost black beauties (the darkest hybrid in my garden is one of theirs). They also host a free open weekend when the hellebores are at their best. This year’s event is on August 19-20 (see hellebores.co.nz for more details).

It’s true. Hellebores are pretty much the perfect garden plant. Although it would be nice if they were intensely perfumed, like daphnes, and had a touch more staying power in the vase.

It’s a shame to blight this hellebore hagiography but even I have to admit that, as florist flowers, winter roses are no match for summer roses. Once cut, they tend to droop within a day or two, so I was intrigued to learn of at least one Tauranga grower supplying hellebores for the export market.

While his main cut flower crops are hydrangeas, snowball virburnums and pieris, Derek Lankshear also sends hellebores to florists in the United States. He isn’t exaggerating when he admits “they are a tricky crop” that’s taken him a few years to get right.

To extend their post-harvest life, the stems should be recut once indoors and briefly dunked into a hydrating liquid such as Floralife Quick Dip (available from afloralaffair.co.nz.) Or use a sharp needle to stab holes up their stems to aid water uptake.

But the real secret, Derek says, is to be patient. Hold off until the blooms are setting their seed pods before you pick them. “If you wait until all the stamens have fallen and the petals are starting to change from their original fresh colours to antique shades,” he reveals, “they’ll last much longer”.

Also hellebores have two distinct flowerings. The first flush of blooms, unfurling in early winter, is much more tender, with petals that mark easily and stems that lose turgidity, causing their heads to flop in the vase, whereas the second flush of flowers in August is hardier once cut.