Heavenly hellebores will remind you that brighter days are on their way
PERENNIALS bloom riotously from May to October. But in February they skulk under ground, refusing to show off their beauty until the warmer weather returns. Thank heavens then for hellebores. Their prime time is now and most will be at their best for weeks to come. Hellebores have durable foliage and distinctive five-petalled flowers. They were originally cultivated as medicinal herbs, but are largely ornamental nowadays.
Most produce leaves and flowers directly from the ground and can be cut back each year. A few flower on the previous year’s shrubby growth.
Our native stinking hellebore, Helleborus foetidus, is like that. Handsome leaves flourish all year and are topped in winter by pale green, maroon-rimmed flowers.
Equally shrubby, Corsican H. argutifolius has apple green flowers and prickly foliage.
To keep these plants healthy, cut away old stems after they’ve flowered and seeded, but leave the new shoots for next year.
Seedlings will surround adult plants, but are easy to remove or transplant.
PEDIGREE PLANTS
THE prettiest and most colourful hellebores are Lenten Roses. That’s the name applied to varieties of H. orientalis often crossed with similar species from Europe and western Asia.
Colours on older varieties used to run from white or green through dusky pinks to muddy purple. Recently, superb modern hybrids have become available.
These result from painstaking hybridisation, particularly by the remarkable John Massey of Ashwood Nurseries, ashwood nurseries.com.
You can now buy oriental hellebores in clear rose pink, an almost fluorescent green, glowing maroon, black, white and even buttercup yellow.
Hellebore hybrids are slow to bulk up and take many years to develop. Unlike most perennials, they are difficult to propagate from division and impossible from cuttings. They don’t take kindly to mass micropropagation either, so named clonal varieties are hard to come by.
But all hellebores seed freely and, if protected from cross pollination, come pretty true to their parents.
THRIVE ON NEGLECT
ORIENTAL hellebores are easy to grow. They benefit from humusrich soil, which stays moist during the flowering period.
If planted under trees, they enjoy the partial shade. They dislike wind and fair poorly in deep shade or full sun.
Unlike most perennials, which need regular splitting, hellebores are best left untouched. John Massey recommends feeding once in early spring and again in August or September when new growth begins. I use chicken manure pellets (sparingly).
Meanwhile, spare a little space in your garden for the prettiest of the wild species.
My favourite, the Bosnian native Helleborus torquatus, has divided leaves and flowers whose black sepal backs contrast gorgeously with the lime green interiors.
And the Christmas rose, H. niger, is a superb species with big, snow white flowers that are plentiful and long-lasting.