Hellebores are pure magic in the Winter garden when your summer flowerers are asleep, they come alive as the temperatures drop and the day length becomes shorter. They flower towards the end of July in the Southern Hemisphere and would love a spot in your garden ideally below deciduous trees to enjoy the summer shade and winter sun.
They are fairly tough plants and seldom suffer from pests or fungal diseases. They love a good dose of compost twice a year in Autumn and Spring and benefit from some 2:3:4 at the same time. They multiply underground with the clumps becoming larger every year and if you leave the flowers on the plant they will spread by seed too.
When harvesting for the vase ensure the older flowers on the stem have matured sufficiently for the seed pod to form, should you harvest too early they tend to wilt easily in the vase. At the correct harvest stage they will give you two to three weeks of pure joy. Their gently nodding blooms are borne on multi stems creating a gorgeous cut flower.
They are naturally fairly short stemmed so are more suited to smaller vase arrangements, bouquets and boutonnieres. We grow a special tissue cultured variety for the cut flower market, they have been hybridized to ensure longer stems for the larger arrangements and these plants produce sterile seed. They rest in the summer months but will still enjoy some water in the hotter drier times.
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