Flowers on Friday: Hellebores!

My second favorite flower in my garden (after roses, of course) is Hellebore. 

The foliage in the foreground is Colchicum bulbs that I have planted among the Hellebores.

Hellebore is a wonderful perennial that requires very little care and loves to live in the shade ... where it rewards the gardener in late winter with graceful flowers that last for months.

Most of the Hellebore plants in my garden are seedlings, because they can reseed with wild abandon.  While this may be a problem with other plants, which can spread and take over a garden, that's not the case for me with Hellebores.

Look at all these tiny new seedlings!  The larger leaf at the top of the photo is a seedling from last year that's large enough to move, if I want to.

Hellebores promiscuously interbreed with each other, and it's exciting to see what the new seedlings look like when they are old enough to flower ... usually when they are two or three years old. I leave the tiny seedlings in place to grow and get established, and I carefully transplant some of the larger, yearling seedlings to other spots in the garden.

This is 'Pink Frost', one of the few named cultivars that I have.

I want to pollinate some of the 'Pink Frost' flowers to see if I can make my own hybrids with it.

Hellebores are wonderful pass-along plants!  Many of my original ones came from friends and/or plant swaps ... seedlings of seedlings from their gardens.  I continue the tradition, sharing seedlings from my garden with others who are interested.

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Weather has been unseasonably warm for us this winter, and my garden is incredibly confused.  Some plants are budding and growing right on schedule (like the Hellebores), and some are very, very early.  Many of my roses have broken bud are starting to sprout, weeks and weeks earlier than normal.  Others are still dormant, like they're supposed to be in late February.  It's going to be a weird garden year.

A Morning Walk in the Garden, and the Making of Hellebore Hill

Early yesterday morning, I put on my red rubber garden shoes, slipped a hoodie over my pajamas, grabbed my camera, and I headed out to see what there was to see in the garden.

The sun was bright, and the shadows were long.  I love early morning in the garden.

The English Garden has recovered really well from last winter's damage.

Many of my David Austin roses in the English Garden are flowering, though few of the flowers are picture perfect.  That's just how it is in late fall ... doesn't make them any less beautiful to me.

The little baby Noisette roses in the English Garden have settled in and grown a lot since I planted them in August. 

Mystery Noisette #1 that lost its tag.

Mystery Noisette #1 that lost its tag.

Mystery Noisette #2, with a faded tag.

Mystery Noisette #2, with a faded tag.

"Mine Road Noisette"

In another part of the garden, 'Belle Vichyssoise' has opened a beautiful spray of fragrant flowers and 'Pink Perpetue' was showing off a perfect flower that looks almost like a camellia.

Today, I worked in the shade garden for most of the day ... hoping to get the area prepped and lot of new plants into the ground.  I am calling this garden Hellebore Hill, because it's catchy and it will have mostly Hellebores in it.  Before I could plant anything, I had to clear the area of hundreds of fallen black walnuts.  I made two trips with the tractor, with the bucket full of nuts, and dumped them in the tree line at the back of our property.

I don't use the tractor a lot, so I don't get to see this view very often.

Once the nuts were gone and the weeds were pulled, it was time to plant.  This 8 x 8 foot space is thickly planted, because I want it to fill in and the plants to grow together.  It contains mostly free plants, a few bargain plants, and some great specimen plants from my garden club plant exchange last weekend ... thirteen two-year-old seedling Hellebores, two fall-flowering Japanese Anemones, two Black Arums (Arum pictum), one Heuchera villosa, and one Aureomaculata Leopard Plant.  It also has ten Colchicums (which are finished for the season) and three clumps of daffodil bulbs.

Even though I was tired after all the prep work, digging all those holes and planting the plants, I continued to work ... putting down a good layer of newspaper on the bare soil and covering it with mulch.  

I'm glad I stuck with it and finished this part of the job completely, because it felt so good to step back and see what I had accomplished.

Soon, I hope to continue the progress down this bed, weeding and planting as I can, to connect this new part of the garden to the existing part that contains mostly mature Hellebores and Hostas.  If I can do this, it means that I will have fewer plants in pots, more plants in the ground, and an awesome new garden to enjoy ... instead of the weed patch that had been there.