Some of the colours of the hellebore rainbow.

There’s no doubt that hellebores are pretty special garden plants.

Flowering at the tail end of winter, with only snowdrops and the occasional early Iris, Cyclamen and Crocus for company, these improbable members of the buttercup family never fail to inspire as they push up their multicoloured flowers and divided leaves through snow or ice, or whatever the winter weather has to throw at them.

Emerging so much earlier than most other spring-flowering plants hellebores would probably command attention even if they were small and weakly coloured.

Apricot with dark nectaries.

Thanks to generations of dedicated enthusiasts, there’s not much chance of that, and these perennials now pack a truly dramatic punch with large cup-shaped flowers in a kaleidoscope of colours from vivid green and pure white through yellow to apricot, pinks & purples and on to the most intense slate blues and deepest violet blacks.

Flower shapes vary from very rounded and cup shaped, to starry with a range of different shaped doubles. Some also have dark red or black-ish nectaries, which gives a different look altogether.

As if that range weren’t enough the flowers of many forms also come with a multitude of different markings. These have evolved to guide pollinating insects safely and accurately towards the reproductive organs of the flowers, but luckily for us it’s not just the eyes of passing bees that are dazzled by the endless different combinations of spots, blotches and lines.

A bit of Botany.

Near black - both flowers and foliage.

Before going any further I need to qualify exactly which hellebores I’m referring to. Helleborus is a small genus of around 15 species, all but one of which are native to Europe. H. foetidus (the rather unkindly named Stinking Hellebore) is actually a British native, but the large majority hail from central southern and eastern Europe, with particular strongholds in scrubby mountainous regions of the Balkans.

The only non-European species is the beautiful H. thibetanus, which, you won’t be surprised to hear, is a native of Tibet.

H. niger (the so-called Christmas Rose) and H. argutifolius are both very well known garden plants, but the large-flowered, multi-coloured garden hellebores are all very complex, multi-species hybrids based in part of the species H. orientalis.

Double white spotted.

Strictly speaking these should be called H. x  hybridus, but in reality hardly anyone used this name.

As a group the plants have widely and pretty consistently come to be known as the Orientalis Hybrids (as well as picking up the unfortunate and totally misleading moniker Lenten Rose)….having said that for simplicities sake I’m going to continue referring to them here simply as hellebores.

Cultivation.

Reverse picotee white spotted.

One of the other great appeals of hellebores is that they really are incredibly easy, tolerant and rewarding plants to grow.

In their wild habitats the species invariably live on slightly alkaline, rocky and generally pretty impoverished soils.

In cultivation they will happily grow in virtually anything you care to give them, although they will of course grow better and certainly provide a better flowering display if they have something halfway decent to sink their roots into.

Hellebores are essentially plants of open, light woodland, so a good, organic-rich soil with a free draining structure will give optimum results. They are also partial to a good feed, and though far from essential, a heavy mulch with well rotted manure in late autumn will see the plants respond with extra lush and large growth the following spring.

Green streaked picotee.

Despite their woodland origins hellebores are actually very sun tolerant and can be grown in a really wide array of garden positions, including that most difficult of all situations – dry shade.

In many ways, though, they both grow and look their best when integrated into a shady or woodland border situation, which of course also closely mirrors the habitats of the wild species.

Ongoing care.

Hellebores are evergreen, with flowers emerging before the foliage and on separate new stems.

The main care involved in growing them in the garden revolves around what to do with the previous years foliage. Many gardeners simply do nothing and leave the whole plants intact year round. There is something to be said for this since the old foliage will certainly help protect the soft new stems as they emerge in winter.

New spring flower stems.

However, those old stems and leaves can also act as snail hotels as well as potentially harbouring various fungal diseases, so the alternative approach is to cut all the previous years foliage and stems right back to ground level in mid winter.

This has the added advantage of allowing the new flowering stems to be displayed to their fullest, without last years raggedly, blotched old leaves marring their pristine beauty.

Propagation.

It is possible, with much care and patience, to divide large plants in order to propagate from highly desirable individual clones. In practice though, hardly anyone fiddles around dividing their hellebores, because they are one of the easiest and most reliable garden plants to grow from seed.

A selection of yellows.

Actually, if you leave the seed heads to develop and ripen on the plants then you’re pretty much guaranteed to find a little crop of satellite babies sprouting around their parent the following spring.

It’s great fun, and really very easy to hand pollinate your favourite coloured plants with one another to see what new colours and patterns result, but simply gathering the copious seed that naturally develops will do the job as well.

Although it is released by the plants in late spring and takes around 9 months to germinate – naturally timed to sprout as the same time that the adult plants come into growth – hellebore seed does not store well and quickly looses viability. It’s simple enough to deal with though, and should be sown as soon as possible after harvesting.

No special treatment is needed although the seed does require winter stratification to stimulate germination, so, after sowing the pots/trays etc. should always be kept outside to experience the winter cold.

Pest and Diseases.

Red picotee with dark nectaries.

Again, these are thankfully few and far between. Slugs and snails will attack young shoots but once the leaves have matured they are far too tough to be appealing to any mollusc. Aphids can likewise congregate on new growth and if not removed will lead to distorted and damaged foliage and flowers.

More importantly aphids are also suspected as the agents responsible for passing on Hellebore Black Death – an all too common viral disease that leads to large black streaks and distortion in the foliage, stems and flowers of hellebores.

A much less serious but also quite widespread problem is Black Spot, a fungal disease that causes “dead” brown blotches to appear on the foliage. Removal of old foliage and good general garden hygiene will greatly reduce the occurrence of this and indeed any other fungal problems.