The hellebore: Popular, early, and now available in a dazzling variety
Certain plants come into vogue and then slip off their pedestal. The daylily in all its rich variety was once the perennial to plant for its seemingly endless supply of showy blooms in the gathering heat of early summer. The deer love its succulent buds, which may have something to do with its fall.
There is one hardy perennial – the hellebore – that has steadily won a place in the heart of the gardener over the past couple of decades and that shows no sign of becoming disfavored or trite. This is in part because deer seem to leave it alone, but that’s only the start of this plant’s value.
The hellebore – I speak of the most familiar version, the Lenten rose (Helleborus x hybridus) – is among the first plants to tell us that spring is on the horizon. In mid – to late winter, the first shoots begin to push from its center, and over the ensuing month it forms a clump of attractive green foliage decorated with nodding blossoms.
At first, the clump’s eruption is skyward but soon gets broader as it grows and the leaves fill in to cloak the blooms. An established plant will be 20 inches high or so, at least as wide and decorated with as many as a hundred flowers. They are small bowls, nodding to protect their pollen against the winter weather. The colors are extraordinary, and they change, softening as the plant completes its seasonal growth spurt. Some are pale yellow, others apricot, others creamy white, or green, or deep magenta, wine or purple-black.
In a normal winter, the hellebore begins to stir sometime in February, reaches its peak of fresh blossoming in March and the blooms persist ornamentally until the end of April.
The flowers endure because the petals are in fact thick structures called sepals. Oddly, for an herbaceous perennial, the hellebore is evergreen. But for a clean display, the previous season’s leaves should be removed before the new growth gets established. Be careful not to slice into the fresh growth or your fingers.
Hellebores are remarkably cold-hardy, which makes them one of the very few plants in the garden that bridges that groundshaking, protean period from late winter to early spring. I often greet the hellebore in the frenzy of April and think, “You kicked off this party way back in February.”
Other gardeners see the beauty, grace and value of hellebores, not least because hellebores can grow in the dry shade of a wooded area where the choices are limited. In hot regions, they prefer a little shade.
When hellebores first hit the scene, the varietal offerings were meager, and, in retrospect, the blooms were mediocre. “We saw the potential of beautiful flowers in English books,” said Marietta O’Byrne, co-owner of Northwest Garden Nursery in Eugene, Oregon.
She and her husband, Ernie O’Byrne, have been key figures in this advance. They have spent almost 30 years refining their varieties in the decidedly low-tech and laborious practice of hand-pollinating and then bagging flowers (to prevent unintended bee pollination) to create seed strains uniform within their respective groups. They are not the usual genetic clones found in mass-produced horticulture, but, as Marietta O’Byrne points out, are “more like brothers and sisters.”
As a result of their skill and devotion, they have raised the bar to the point that the original English varieties they aspired to pale by comparison. They have worked too on foliage ornament and in developing plants where the blooms are more outward-facing and easier to appreciate.
As cut flowers, hellebores are prone to wilting. The way to bring them indoors is to snip off the blooms and float them in a shallow bowl where they will keep for a week or more.
The O’Byrnes’ nursery holds a couple of open days but is not mail-order. Their seed and seedlings go to major wholesale growers, who then supply garden centers and other retail outlets.