Helleboures  (Helleborus)

• Helleboures  Invaluable for providing winter and early spring colour, hellebores are mostly undemanding and easy, once established.
• Flowers vary greatly in colour and the range of shades and shapes available increases all the time. Forming mounds of attractive foliage, reaching around 60cm in height.
• Best in moist well-drained fertile soils, in part-shade. Useful for massing beneath trees and shrubs and associate well with spring bulbs and other woodland plants.
• If you get black spotting on the leaves in winter you can remove them: it helps to show off the flowers better and the leaves will grow back.
• Hellebores do not like being moved once established, and are hard to divide, but may self-seed round the garden. 

The most popular by far are these two groups:

H. niger hybrids # H5 (Christmas Rose) white nodding flowers, mid-December-March, very fine. Lots of new more vigorous and easier to grow hybrids are now available and in stock at Glendoick December to end of February.

H. x hybridus/H. orientalis (The Lenten Rose) H4-5 (to 50cm) nodding cup-shaped flowers in varying shades of white, pink and purple, sometimes dark spotted. There are lots of good strains: Ashwood, Ballard’s, Kaye’s, and now there are also numerous spotted, dark purple, two-toned, yellow and double hybrids (Queeen Series, Lady Series, etc) coming on to the market; just choose the colours you prefer: if you are lucky, you can select plants in flower. Evergreen or semi-evergreen divided shiny mid-green leaves.

Species Hellebores

H. argutifolius (formerly H. corsicus) # H4 (60 x 90cm) an architectural, semi-shrubby, evergreen with sprays of apple-green flowers, February to May, lobed and toothed grey-green leaves,

H. foetidus (stinking hellebore) # H5 (60-90cm) T a Scottish native, evergreen, with deeply cut dark green leaves, light green to cream red-tipped flowers from late winter to spring. The crushed leaves smell unpleasant, hence the name. Will seed around freely on dry banks. Unfortunately prone to a black spot foliage disease which can be fatal, H. f. ‘Wester Flisk Group’ purple stems and a deeper red tip to the flowers, selected at Flisk on the river Tay.

H. x sternii ‘Blackthorn Group’ # H3-4 (50cm) green flowers, stained pinkish or purple, stems purple, leaves veined attractively.