Easy care hellebores

Hellebores seem to be getting a lot of attention these days–they’re a great looking, easy care plant that blooms in late winter to early spring. Chosen as the Perennial Plant Association’s Perennial Plant of the Year in 2005, more and more bloom colours have become available, due to the diligent work of breeders.

 

I have a couple hellebores in my garden, including a stunning dark purple one in my front yard, pictured in this post.

 

They’re quite a sophisticated looking plant yet they aren’t hard to grow. They thrive in low light with good soil and good drainage.I don’t give mine any extra care–it just lives on the regular compost and mulch the rest of the front garden gets.

 

The only real care hellebores need is in the spring. This is what mine looked like:

Hellebore’s hold their leaves all winter, but by spring those leaves looking pretty bad. In fact, if you were to walk by my garden you probably wouldn’t even notice the amazing dark purple blooms–all you’d see would be the mess of browned leaves.

 

The solution is simple–cut off the old leaves:

The plant doesn’t need those old leaves as new ones have emerged with the blooms. Now that the old leaves are gone, the flowers become the start of the show.

In a couple weeks the blooms will open up and look like this:

 

The blooms will last for a long time too. So if you’ve been tempted by hellebores at the nursery but were worried they’d be difficult to grow, now you know all you need to to grow them.

 

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