Hellebores for the beginner and the limited.
Eleanor Grant
last year
last modified: last year
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Hellebore Breeding
Comments (80)Hellebores are doing well at the moment - must admit that I am swaying away from the darker colours and am amazed by the beauty of some of the picotee buds now opening (boughton plants so far!). However, I have been very busy hand pollinating and am trying (hybridus) pink speckled with each other, blacks with black, purples with black,'Blue moon' with blacks, picotees with each other (hedging my bets on the outcome as I have no real idea what to expect),pink&whites with picotee amongst others. Also experimenting with picotee hybridus pollen on a good example of dumertorum, Eric Smith Black (&purple) pollen on purpurascens, niger pollen on argutifolius. I am aiming also to try for foetidus x argutifolius just for the hell of it !! and am looking for some gold-leaved foetidus to cross with foetidus 'Wester Flisk'. One of our first 3 year old hybridus has eventually!!! after about a month, opened it's first bud - I was not expecting much and hoped for a good colour overall even if the shape might be less than perfect. Well...it's white with a little green and the shape is, without being big-headed..marvellous - would my best bet be to self the plant (not usually desirable I know) to obtain seedlings quite like their parent ?!). Unfortunately the seedling came from open-pollinated seed - if I had hand-pollinated to produce this plant, my aim would have been to cross it with one of it's sister seedlings but this is not an option!!. Our foetidus seedlings originating from seed collected in La Tania in the French Alps have just had their first pricking-out session today (300ish) with approximately another 200+ to go !. I have tagged plants showing red stems to keep back for breeding purposes, though the majority are green. However the parent plants were fine in themselves with just green stems and fine-leaved foliage ! How are your plants/crosses doing ?! regards Richard...See MoreI see now why gardeners like those hellebores
Comments (39)Just a little shout out for the species (especially for you foliage lovers). Our native h.foetidus (although it really doesn't whiff) has the most elegant deep green, almost black foliage...which looks utterly gorgeous with snowdrops and red stemmed dogwoods...and when the small, lime green, crimson edged flowers arrive (look out for 'wester flisk'), it is stellar. The huge leaved h.corsicanus (and smaller h.lividus) have been used extensively in the new hybrids (particularly the ericsmithii types)...but the straight species are fabulous, with the foliage looking as good in August as it did in March. For the warmer areas, the balkan h.torquatus and h.atrorubens are smaller in flower and daintier altogether but have uniquely coloured forms which look exceptional with ferns and grasses. I generally avoid the iffy h.niger....although I am seeing some possible hybrids such as Potters Wheel having niger in the mix. I confess to disliking the doubles, although the flowers do hold for weeks and weeks...and although I do try to buy when in flower (my sweetheart drove 70 miles to collect a single yellow, unspotted single once), I have not really made any inroads into the named varietal craze as the variation in the basic h.orientalis has been sufficient to keep me entertained. To start a collection, I heartily recommend buying a packet of Ashwood or Ballard hybrids and sowing around September. Within 3 years, you will have a good basis for a collection (they are almost foolproof at germinating and growing on, being able to go into the ground the first autumn and left alone for another couple of years....See MoreTransplanting mature Hellebores now, in So CA?
Comments (8)Oops! The only comment I saw was Ken’s first comment before I responded back. I’m a little slow in that department (posting). So.......I still love the idea of “beefing them up with water” in the few weeks prior to digging. The stronger they start off, the better off they’ll be. Thanks, Gardengal! I noticed that my aunt hadn’t even cut off the dry blooms from January. That’s lucky for me, otherwise I wouldn’t know which ones were singles, doubles, purple, white, or lime green. I’ll be sure to attach a tag with a bloom description to each plant. After I tag them by color and other characteristics, is it ok to cut only the dry blooms off? I can’t think of any reason to leave the old blooms on the plants, unless they would help protect the rest of the foliage from the sun. If I plant them directly into the ground, they WILL get some direct morning sun. There’s not much I could do about that morning sun, if I plant directly into the ground. The only reason I was considering potting them into containers first, is because they could stay in the shade all day in containers. Maybe I could do a mixture of both. If I see any tiny baby plants, they could be potted up and kept in containers in the shade until late November? If I find lots of small ones, I’d be more likely to give both ways a shot. Thank you both very much for your quick replies. I’m going to ask my aunt to start giving them some good soakings, starting now. I’m really glad you two told me not to cut them back. Cutting them back would have happened to some degree without your input, for sure. Thanks for telling me. What about removing those dry blooms? I saw loads of them left on the plants just the other day. Thanks, Lisa...See MoreHellebores, Just hellebores
Comments (62)You have a beautiful and wonderfully diverse collection of hellebores, MYAL! I enjoy your videos very much! THank you for sharing them. When do you divide your hellebores? Do you divide them before they grow and bloom in the winter or do you divide them after they bloom?...See Morerouge21_gw (CDN Z5b/6a)
last yearlast modified: last yearEleanor Grant thanked rouge21_gw (CDN Z5b/6a)Eleanor Grant
last yearlast modified: last yearruth_mi
last yearEleanor Grant
last year41 North (Zone 7a/b, NE, coastal)
last yearrouge21_gw (CDN Z5b/6a)
last yearcecily 7A
last yearfloral_uk z.8/9 SW UK
last year41 North (Zone 7a/b, NE, coastal)
last yearMarie Tulin
last yearrouge21_gw (CDN Z5b/6a)
last year
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gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)