Peek into the gardens of landscape designers and expert gardeners, and you’re sure to see at least one of the hellebores. Why? Simple.
These long-lived perennials have handsome evergreen leaves. Several varieties unfold lovely flowers during the bleak winter months, and their culture is easy.
Give hellebores a permanent, partially shaded home in deeply dug soil enriched with manure or compost. Ample water during the summer ensures crisp, lush foliage and abundant embryo flowers for winter bloom.
Helleborus niger, the Christmas rose, is the first to bloom, its pure white flowers starting to open in November and continuing until late winter.
Helleborus foetidus blooms next. Its abundant pale green flowers are lovely near drifts of golden, early-blooming daffodils.
Helleborus orientalis, the Lenten-rose, extends the blooming season into spring. Several pendant flowers with freckled petals ranging from greenish-white to pink, rose, and maroon is produced on each branching 2′-foot stem.
Use it as a background for violets, primroses, and trilliums or to give variety in height and texture in a ground cover planting of ajuga, English ivy, or epimedium.
The regal Helleborus lividus is the last to bloom. Its large clusters of chartreuse flowers last until May. Plant it among ferns and hostas or use its soft blue-green foliage to lighten a planting of such shrubs as pieris, kalmia, or yew.
All the hellebores are attractive the year-round beside a shaded path or as an edging for a foundation planting of skimmia, aucuba, or mahonia. Surely there is room in your garden for some of these handsome plants.
FGR-1158 – Jean Grossman