How To Grow Oriental Hellebores

Plant hellebores for fabulously unpredictable blooms through winter, says Anne Swithinbank

- Anne Swithinbank

WINTER can be long and bleak unless you happen to be a canny gardener. We stretch autumn to early December, enjoy the distractions of Christmas and New Year, then just when the prospect of another three gloomy months looms, our gardens erupt with winter flowering shrubs, snowdrops, winter aconites and the fabulous, often unpredictable blooms of oriental hellebores.There are 15 species of hellebores belonging to the buttercup family with their origins in Europe and Western Asia. All have their place in the garden but the largest and most flamboyant are known as Helleborus x hybridus because they are hybrids between H. orientalis (The Lenten Rose) and other species.