Gardener's Guide to Growing Hellebores

Christmas rose and Lenten rose are the gardener's romantic names for the best-known and best-loved hellebores. They are nature's gift to gardeners in the dismal months after Christmas, when the weather is cold and discouraging and spring seems a long way ahead. At a time when few other flowers brave the elements, except the lovely but fleeting winter-flowering Iris unguicularis, which can be pulled for the house, and the cheerful Cyclamen coum, lighting up the garden, only the snowdrops in their prim whiteness and fascinating variety of forms can compete with hellebores. It is not only their early flowering that makes hellebores so special - it is above all the sheer size and quality of their flowers coupled with their range of colours, from pure whites, primrose yellows, pure greens, through pinks, plums and darkest midnight purples, to slaty blue-blacks in a wonderfully subtle range of hues. Turn the flowers up and a magical transformation takes place, revealing an almost endless variety of shading, veining, and spotting. Of particular delight are the spotted forms, and many of us have been spellbound by the magic of pure white flowers transformed into spotted ones by the gardeners' sleight of hand. Starting to flower so early, hellebores are in full glory for ten to twelve weeks, to be joined in turn by all the other treasures of the spring garden. The flowers assume green or subtle pinky, coppery or smoky purple tints as the seed is shed in midsummer. By then the leaves are at their best, from the bold stems of H. argutifolius and H. foetidus to the finely divided foiage of H. multifidus and the bold dark green clumps of the Orientalis Hybrids. Besides all these attributes, hellebores are easy to grow and generous with their seed, offering the promise of many more treasures in years to come.Rice, Graham is the author of 'Gardener's Guide to Growing Hellebores' with ISBN 9780881925173 and ISBN 0881925179.