Enjoying the best of each season is something I’ve always tried to do, and now I’ll remind you to do the same. There are flowers that come into bloom naturally during the winter, and hellebores are the most unusual of that lot. The photos below show a few of the varieties – notice that although the colors are muted, the flowers have a graceful, restrained beauty that fits the season.
Hellebores are fantastic cut flowers, lasting a week or more in the vase. The trick to getting the longest vase life is to wait until the stamens drop off. Read about that here. I don’t always do that, because I like the look of the younger, fuller flower, but even then the blooms last five days or more. One word of caution - hellebores attract aphids like crazy! I use neem oil spray as an organic pest control, but really a hard spray of water can also work.
Erin Benzakein of Floret has written about hellebores in her blog, and I recommend her posts for more information. Her posts inspired me to plant more – for years I only had one hellebore plant, but last year I added several new plants, and I’m hoping for lots of blooms this month.
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