In praise of hellebores...

[shovetheholly]

...because they are so pretty!

I love the new double, hybrid varieties. Here's the latest one I purchased - Harvington Double White Speckled.

That's lovely.
I just have plain old single colour single flower white and deep purple ones in my garden, they are great at this time of year and self seed like mad.

Thats lovely. Mine are all dead I can't grow anything here, its awful. Even the grass is dead.

I love hellebores too. Managed to grow a large white one which just keeps going. Didn't do so well with others but I love that colour in Jan.

They are lovely! We have several in our garden and it's a great alternative or addition to the bulbs.

I have a really gorgeous pink double too, and a double that is a very deep purple, almost black, which is very stylish but rather gets lost against the soil until you see it closer to. It needs to be against a whiter backdrop!

Odins - oh no! Where are you?! Is it really warm and dry or something?

shovetheholly Im in staffordshire moorlands but our estate is built on top of heavily contaminated land that had previously been a chemical factory.
The soil is mainly rubble and despite over 10 tonnes of soil being added between the front and back gardens its still mainly rubble and kills everything.
I can grow the odd pot or 2 but we rarely get bees or birds because no one has any plants in their gardens. Its all a bit surreal if you've never visited before

Gosh, that sounds like hard work odin. I'm not that far from you - Sheffield - and I have friends in the moorlands,so I know the climate and rough area a little, even though I don't know your estate.I suspect the rubble may be the main culprit for your problems (one would hope proper remediation work had been done on the site) - it really does make it difficult to keep things alive.

One thing you could do is to build raised beds, and bring in fresh, clean topsoil to plant into. This might be easier than mattocking out lots of rubble??

odin there was a recent documentary shoeing oyster mushrooms decontaminating soil at an incredible rate. It might be with investigating!!

Annnnnndddd I love hellebores I moved last year and the gardens are empty!! I've dedicated the front garden to being my winter/ early spring garden and have so far got the single white and single freckled. My mums splitting her black and double freckled this year tho so I've skyway put my request in! The Witch hazel I planted in autumn has done superbly too!

~already not skyway!!

The mushrooms might be worth a look. Thanks.

I love hellebores, too. It's taken ages for mine to bulk up and this is the first year I'm really pleased with them.

Wow maud that's a stunner!

shwighty - a Mum who grows hellebores large enough to divide is fantastic! I'm not surprised you dialled in your order straight away!

Oh I love them too. They are so.... Victorian. Beautiful.
I've got a couple of the green/cream flowered variety, as well as the dusky pink

I adore hellebores. They're my favourite flower ❤

This is one of mine

I too have got into them recently - I got a 10 for £15 offer from Hayloft, as I didn't know if I could grow them. Half did die, but of the surviving plants, I especially love my deep purple almost black one. My SIL has loads inherited when she moved house. She floats the flowers in a shallow bowl and they look beautiful. I have a soft pink one that looks good planted with a blue/pink pulmonaria.

One day I'll pay £10 or so for one of the new hybrids the flowers of which stand proud - Monty showed a lovely black one on Gardeners World last Friday.

I also have helleborus foetidus - I bought one, and it died after 3 years, but just before it died it seems it released fertile seed as that year I had loads of little seedlings that are now mature. So I have gorgeous apple green flowers all round the garden.

Bumping this slightly old thread in the hopes that one of you lovely hellebore enthusiasts can advise me on when the best time of year is to plant out a purchased hellebore plant (hellerborus x hybridus)? Google doesn't seem to be enlightening me.

I've got a partially shaded area in my garden that I think hellebores would live very well in, and I'm seeing loads of them in flower at the moment at my place of work, thus inspiring me to go out and buy a couple of plants! However, I'd rather know if I'm better waiting until a particular time of year to go buying & planting...

TIA!

I don't have many hellebores, but I do love them. I bought my newest ones in autumn and ,planted up straight away and they are just finishing flowering.
I have just dug up and replanted a seedling . I listened to GQT about them only last week I think . They suggested move after flowering . I did take a fair chunk of root and soil with it.

With the hybrids, I I tend to divide in autumn but plant new ones in late winter/early spring (just because that's when they are in shops), but I think you could just as easily do them now, provided you ensure they don't get too dry - they're probably on offer, too, because the flowering season has just finished!!

I think the foetidus and argutifolius types don't divide well - they seed.

Interesting article on types of hellebore here - some I've never heard of!

www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/10648349/A-hellebore-for-almost-any-situation.html

Love Hellebores. I bought small ones a couple of years ago that have flowered for the first time. They were white and deep red but all the flowers have changed to pale green. Is this normal? When they finish flowering do I just leave them ?

I'm slightly confused - you say that the flowers were white and deep red, but that they have just flowered for the first time and they are green? Do you mean that they were sold as white and deep red, but they've come up green, or that they were definitely red-flowered but that they have reverted to green?

Ah, good idea about getting a bargain! Thanks ladies

Sorry Holly. They flowered for the first time. Two of them had creamy white flowers and the other had red flowers. As the weeks have passed the new flowers coming through are all pale green. Could it be the soil?

My brightly coloured hellebore flowers gradually go greener as they get to the end of the flowering season. Could it be that?

Anybody want to swap hellebore seedlings?
I have loads which will be dusky purple. I sent a load to a poster here a few years back (I had a different name then).
I'd love to find out how they got on.