Hellebores offer beautiful blooms, colors

By Pam Baytos

OSU Extension master gardener volunteer

Hellebores are loved by gardeners for their long bloom time, reliability, evergreen foliage and tolerance of a wide variety of light and soil conditions.

With flower colors ranging from cream to burgundy, pink and even black, and forms in single and double, patterns that are speckled and veining, the variety of blooms on this plant is amazing.

There’s a lot of hybridizing going on and more colors and forms are becoming available.

The flowers of hellebores are a welcome sight when they bloom in late winter to early spring, sometimes when the ground is still covered with snow.

The actual hellebore blooms are small and non-showy. What we think of as flowers are similar to bracts, like the red bracts of poinsettias. This gives the effect of long-lasting flowers.

Hellebore (H. argutifolius) is a robust plant with pale green cup-shaped flowers and attractive leathery foliage.

The stinking hellebores (H foetidus) has drooping clusters of small, pale green, bell-shaped flowers, often edged with maroon, which contrasts with its dark green evergreen foliage.

The so called Christmas rose (H niger) is a traditional cottage garden favorite that bears pure white flowers in the depths of winter.

Large flowered cultivars are available, as are pink-flowered and double-flowered selections.

The most popular hellebores are H orientalis and its colorful hybrids. They often bloom during the Christian season of Lent and are often called Lenten roses.

Despite names such as “Winter rose,” “Christmas rose” and “Lenten rose,” hellebores are not closely related to the rose family.

Once your garden of hellebores is established, there is little maintenance.

Hellebores prefer well-drained locations, and will tolerate a wide range of light conditions; ideally planted in the shade of deciduous trees.

Hellebores are lovely with other plants that thrive in light shade, such as ferns, tiarella, campanula, alchemilla, hosta and pulmonaria.

Plant hellebores like any perennial, backfilling the hole with native soil during any season – even winter, as long as the ground isn’t frozen.

They’re evergreen, though foliage can get battered by late winter.

Just prune dead leaves to make room for new growth and flowering.

They like an evenly moist location, but can take dry conditions once established. Water well during extended dry periods.

They are not heavy feeders, and should get what they need from an application of mulch, and are disliked by rabbits, deer and other pests prone to munching plants.

They can reseed heavily. Usually the seedlings are located at the base of the parent plant and will flower in about the third spring. This can create a nice natural setting, but might not be desirable for every gardener. Deadheading before seeds set can reduce the problem.