Tidy up hellebores
Hellebores are one of the most robust and elegantly beautiful of all the flowers of early spring and, by and large, they need almost no attention at all to keep performing year on year. However, it is necessary to remove last year’s foliage if this year’s blooms are to be revealed to their best advantage. I tend to do this over a couple of sessions in early January and February, because if all the leaves are removed in one go, it leaves the emerging flower stems a little naked. So I cut back any leaves that have fallen below the horizontal, otherwise they have a tendency to smother the emerging flowering stems, most of which won’t open until next month. I also remove any that are damaged or showing the familiar chocolate blotches of hellebore leaf spot. I then burn the leaves rather than compost them.