Cheer Up Winter with Helleborus Flowers
Shining through the snow we have these delightful softly tinted flowers. I find hellebores grow well in my clay soil. I have them growing in dappled shade under my trees mixed with bluebell bulbs, primroses, ferns and hostas. The foliage provides good cover all year and the little flowers and delicate veined foliage also look beautiful in winter flower arrangements. Float the heads in a shallow icy bowl of water and use as a center piece for your dinner table.
Helleborus xericsmithii 'Winter Moonbeam'
xericsmithii varieties are a cross of H. x sternii and H. niger, making them half Christmas rose and early flowering.Its flowers begin creamy white fade to pink and then a deeper red and are prolific like 'Winter Sun'. If that wasn't enough to win you over the foliage has a lovely marbling ingrained.
Helleborus xericsmithii 'Winter Sunshine'
Another new British plant that arrived in 2007
It has proved its worth in the garden. Beautiful flowers that also fade from cream to red with age on lush leathery evergreen foliage.
'Pirouette' is another lovely hybrid sharing the same cross. Leaves again are evergreen and leathery, flowers are a creamy white slightly flushed. Another excellent early plant for a partly shaded border or in a container in a shady place..
