Re: Hellebore popularity


----- Original Message ----- From: "Jan Smithen" <jsmithen@earthlink.net>

Hi Nan,

If you showed up one day in the Friday class at the LA County Arboretum you
would not believe hellebores are unpopular. Most avid gardeners love them!
Why?
1. Really good shade plant, adding an unusual hand-like leaf form to
the texture of plantings.
2. Can take a wide variety of sun to shade situations - the
Mediterranean ones can take really deep, deep shade as well as sun.
3. Mediterranean ones (and their hybrid, Ivory Prince) are fairly
drought tolerant - but not completely!
4. Bloom in the winter when you can really appreciate them.
5. Fairly long lived, leaving volunteer seedlings when they do
croak.
6. At least the Helleborus hybridus are good container plants -
Medits get too big.
7. New "Royal Heritage" hybrids offer a wide range of bloom color.

THE ONE REASON THEY ARE PASSED BY AT THE NURSERY: because they are slow
growing and propagated by seed, they are more expensive than other plants.
I think Hellbores are great, and especially valuable to me as so much of my ornamental garden is now shaded by old established trees.. The two which do the best in my garden are H orientalis (hybridus) and H foetidus. Both self seed vigorously and indeed most of my orientalis were seedlings from a friend's garden, apart from a scattering of superior selections I bought and which undoubtedly have more vigour but not necessarily better colours. I have one oddity among those I bought, this one (A magnificent white) is very late even starting into growth and usually flowers when its fellows in the same bed are all set to drop their seeds. Every year I am afraid it has vanished until at last its green nose begins to emerge, as its leaves do not seem to last from one year to another..

In the case of H foetidus the self-seeded plants which just pick where they want to grow are a great deal more vigorous and floriferous than any I have planted, so I now tend to let them please themselves. One of my best is in full flower at present in late winter and the H orientalis varieties are just coming out (and very pretty they look).

One thing we do not seem to suffer from here is the leaf disease which seems to plague European growers of orientalis and I tend to leave some of the old leaves each year until they become tatty looking.

Moira

Moira
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