HELLES BELLES
HELLEBORES
GIVEN the choice of just one plant to have in my garden to cheer up February, it would be the lenten hellebore. Not that there is only one of them – thanks to the work of specialist nurserymen who are even more crackers about them than I am, we now have a whole race of Helleborus orientalis hybrids.
The original species came from the northern parts of Greece and Turkey but hellebores manage wonderfully well in British gardens.
From April through to January you will have a tidy clump of foot-high fingered leaves, similar in form to those of a horse chestnut. In January, scissor them off at ground level, taking care not to damage the flower buds, which will be nesting on the surface of the soil.
There are two reasons for this dramatic pruning opera
tion. The first is the removal of the old leaves, and the second is that you are less likely to be plagued by a nasty disease that occasionally affects the plant – black rot. Most plants on welldrained soil in sun or dappled shade (hellebores do especially well in lightly shaded areas) will be as happy as Larry and their clumps will increase in size year on year. From late January through February and March the flowers will open at the top of stems that are 9in to 12in
high. They may be white, yellow, pink, crimson or dusky purple, and many of the lighter shades are spotted with crimson.
There are singles and doubles and all of them are worth having, but choose your plants at a garden centre when they are in bloom and you can see what you’re getting.
A dusting of blood, bone and fishmeal after flowering, and a mulch of well-rotted leaf mould, compost or chipped bark at the same time, will keep them in the peak of fitness and make a suitable seedbed for offspring that you can dig up and grow on to increase your colony.
NEED SOME COLOUR TO LIFT YOUR SPIRITS? GET OUT IN THE GARDEN AND PLANT SOME VIBRANT