The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
WINTER WONDER
Hellebores come out in all their glory when most other plants are still in deep seasonal dormancy
It’s now time that we had a bit more colour in our lives and that’s being given to us by lovely little Hellebores. Looking out the window to the bare soil, parts of your garden can feel monochrome – but adding of a few of these little charms will create sparkle. We have our own native, commonly known as the “stinking hellebore” perfectly describing the foliage when crushed, but it’s varieties of the Christmas and Lenten rose that I’ve started taking a fancy for, which adds a bit of cheer to my garden in winter.
Cutting away the old foliage of these perennials is recommended in late autumn to reduce the spread of disease, but I have to admit I never get around to doing this at that time. I prefer to leave it as one of the first jobs I do straight after Christmas. I find it a nice way to connect with the soil again and the new season ahead, checking on the progress of the new flowers and how far they are coming on, depending on what kind of winter we are having.
They’re not little plants, in fact with their foliage they create a mound up to 60cm/2ft tall, which being toothed and leathery bring a different kind of interest for the rest of the year after the blooms have faded.
The flowers do tend to droop though, meaning you may have to stoop down yourself to be able to fully appreciate them, but it’s worth it.
The cup-shaped, spotted flowers that come in shades of white, pink and purple are beautiful – a word that is used quite often to describe flowers but in this case couldn’t be more perfect.
To be able to see them better, one little trick you could do is plant at a higher level like the bank or terrace beside a path. I’ve planted in a hanging basket before, next to the back door, knowing I could look up and straight into the flowers for a perfect view.
It kind of worked but these plants don’t like being moved about and I just wonder if I upset the roots a bit too much during all this, as they didn’t survive once I planted them out into the soil.
Other than that, they are tough plants once established, and they’re supposed to be deer and rabbit resistant, what more could we want?
Hellebores along with spring crocus, snowdrops and winter aconites are perfect for a late winter/early spring display underneath the canopies of trees and deciduous shrubs, strutting their stuff before being hidden away from view once the plants towering over them are fully clothed with leaves again.
This is a great way to make use of every bit of space you have, however if you do have the luxury of a little extra room then I’d recommend filling with a plant which has the most unusual of flowers found on the winter flowering shrub, Hamamelis.
Also known as witch hazel, it was one of the first shrubs I recall learning about. I’m not sure now if this was due to their little spidery looking, ribbon-petalled flowers, or because it was the first time I appreciated that plants can flower in winter too. I just love them.
Their yellow, red and orangey-coloured flowers appear before the leaves do and are able to stay intact no matter what winter wants to throw at them. Yellow forms such as Barmstedt Gold are scented.
The foliage resembles that of the hazel which, before dropping at the end of the growing season, gives us fine autumncoloured displays of yellow and oranges, deservedly earning their place in my list of “Top plants for the tight Scot”, due to the fact they give us more than one season of interest and are excellent value for money.
The prospect of pruning can be quite daunting for some gardeners, however, the joy of these slow-growing shrubs is that they generally do not require much except for removing any dead wood.
What you should be looking out for and removing is growth coming from the base of the plant, also known as suckers. They will be coming from the rootstock from which a cutting from the cultivar you are buying has been grafted on to.
For tough and reliable plants for our Scottish gardens there are certainly a few out there to choose from, but if I had to pick just one it would be Hamamelis x intermedia Jelena, which grows 3-4m tall and wide, the flowers are a rich coppery-red colour which sometimes appears more orange. The foliage turns a similar colour in autumn.
WEE JOB FOR THE WEEKEND
I recently noticed a bit of mould on the neck of a few of my onions I’ve started off in modules growing in my glasshouse. It’s been a cold winter so it’s not surprising, despite me having a heater in there to try to keep the temperature of the house frost-free.
There should be a few sunnier days to come where it will be warm enough to open up the door and vents for an hour during the middle of the day to get a bit of air flowing through and dry the house out.