23-02-2025
Why you should grow hellebores – and five of the best to plant now
Every garden needs some hellebores. Not only do they bring beauty and colour to the winter garden; these long-lived perennials also satisfy early flying pollinators, including newly emerged bumblebee queens. The saucer-shaped flowers can be accessed by a whole range of pollinators, all in search of pollen and nectar. The flowers persist for eight weeks or more because the so-called petals are, in fact, weather-resistant leathery sepals, so the flowers last and offer excellent garden value.
Colourful hybrids for the garden border
Many of the hellebores you'll find for sale are deliberately bred hybrids, drawing on some of the 22 species. Many are snow-melt plants found naturally in the Balkans. The commercially produced hybrids will be labelled H. x hybridus, although you might know them by their old name of oriental hellebore.
Colours vary from ivory white, apple green, pink, apricot, yellow and red through to slaty black. Yellows and apricots tend to be slower to bulk up and, to my mind, they need more warmth than we have at the moment. The pinks and creamy whites are generally stronger, and paler colours make more of an impact on the eye. Sultry hellebores tend to blend into the ground, so give them an evergreen backdrop or surround them with blue Scilla siberica. Reds are few and far between, but they glow in the garden, so do snap them up if you see them. There are singles, doubles and anemone-centred flowers on offer, and some have spots or streaks. Others have a dark picotee edge to the so-called petals and the picotees will often have deliciously dark nectaries as well.
The best hybrid hellebores on offer are raised by Ashwood Nurseries and they have been hybridised for at least 20 years, using selected stock plants. Every seedling has to flower before being sold, so that the crème de la crème can be kept and used for breeding. Ashwood offers mail order, but a personal visit to the West Midlands nursery allows you to select your own in person. The Evolution Group, bred using the best Ashwood yellows, comes in shades of amber, apricot, peach and blood-orange and I have found they need a sheltered site. Ashwood Nurseries offer a fabulous range of colours and forms, some of them pricey.
You'll also find Harvington hellebores in garden centres, and these are raised from colour strains developed by Hugh Nunn, a process that took him many years. His work is carried on by his daughter, Penny Dawson of Twelve Nunns Nursery. These are great garden plants with names such as Shades of Night, Single Dusky, Double Purple Cascade and Single Pink Speckled. They are a cheaper option and you can also order plug plants from the nursery website and grow them on yourself.
Species hellebores with simpler flowers
Ashwood Nurseries and Twelve Nunns also propagate some easy-to-grow species and they include a British native found in deep woodland shade, Helleborus foetidus. Known as the stinking hellebore, because the flowers have a slightly meaty smell that lures in flies, this combines a head of nodding small red-rimmed green bells held above dark green divided foliage. It's a great shade plant and it's compact, unlike the Corsican hellebore, H. argutifolius, which produces stems that splay outwards like spokes on a cartwheel. You'll need space for that one, but the silver-and golden-leafed forms are less rampant.
Many hybrid hellebores bred from closely allied species are sterile: they do not set seeds, so these have to be micro-propagated. They often have marbled leaves which, if healthy, make a good winter feature. Rodney Davey's Marbled Group, raised in Devon by this master hybridiser, includes 'Anna's Red' which was named after garden writer Anna Pavord. Of the many, I find 'Penny's Pink' the best because the flowers fade beautifully, from purple-pink to silver-sheened rose madder. The beauty of these is that they can be grown in pots, or in the garden. Crocus has a good range, and you'll find others on the website, including the early flowering German-bred Ice and Roses Series and the Ellen range of hybrid hellebores.
For pots only
The Christmas Rose usually has pure-white single flowers and dark green foliage and it flowers around midwinter, hence the name. It is an impossible task to grow it in the border, because this limestone-loving alpine flowers on the mountain tops of what used to be called Yugoslavia. Save yourself the heartbreak and strife and grow this one in a pot. There are doubles and pinks too.
Growing tips
These members of the buttercup family prefer humus-rich soil that holds moisture in summer without getting waterlogged in winter.
If you're on heavier soil, consider making a raised bed and add coarse grit and humus-rich compost to improve drainage.
Although hellebores grow in semi-shade, they can also be planted in brighter areas that avoid midday sunshine.
If you're growing them in pots, they will need regular feeding. They should last for three years; after that, put them in the garden.
If the plant is pot bound, with roots going round and round, you need to damage the roots with secateurs and tease some of the roots down.
You can move hellebores very successfully. If you want to divide them, split them into two pieces, or three at most, and then replant.
Dead-head the flowers as they fade.
