Around the holidays, when it is offered as a Christmas rose, container-grown hellebore may be seen. These are frequently used for decorations before being let to rot or are simply thrown away, along with other seasonal plants like poinsettia. However, there is no need to allow your potted hellebore to deteriorate. Until you’re ready to plant it outside, you may either keep it in a pot and enjoy it both indoors and outside all year long.
Hellebores require rich, well-drained soil, so make sure to select a pot with drainage holes and plant them in rich, organic potting soil or amend their current soil with compost. Additionally, as hellebore plants dislike being moved, a large container should be selected. Give your plant room to flourish because moving stress can be harmful. Given that the roots typically grow downward, the pot’s depth is very crucial.
Place your potted hellebores where they will receive the most sunlight over the winter and early spring. As the temperature rises, a little shade will be welcome. In the winter, hellebore prefers cooler temperatures, so make sure it receives sun without getting too hot. Find an elevated spot for your container-grown hellebore so you can completely enjoy it. The flowers have a tendency to fall downward.
Hellebore thrives when grown in the ground outside, but if you’re short on space or just want to enjoy these wonderful blossoms indoors, you should be able to make it happy in a container.
How well do hellebores grow in pots?
Because you can position hellebores in pots farther away from your garden door in the summer when they’re less appealing, we adore them for this reason.
For optimal results, make sure the pot has good drainage, rich soil, and that it is consistently topped off with compost to promote ongoing healthy development and flowering.
Using the versatility of container planting, place your hellebores where the flowerheads can be seen, such as on a windowsill, in a raised bed, or on top of a low wall. Keep in mind that the flowerheads of hellebores hang downwards.
Are hellebores suitable as indoor plants?
When most plants are dormant, Hellebores (Helleborus spp.) burst into bloom, illuminating the dismal winter months with their bell-shaped, nodding petals. They thrive outside, but if the correct conditions are present, they can also grow well indoors. Hellebores are a hassle-free houseplant because they require only routine watering and feeding and little in the way of direct maintenance. However, due to their extreme toxicity, they must be kept out of the reach of curious children and animals.
Where should a hellebore be planted for optimum results?
Depending on the variety, plant hellebores in full or partial shade at the front of a border. They can be grown in pots in a compost with a loam basis, but they thrive in rich, well-drained soil.
When to plant hellebores
As long as the soil is not frozen, hellebores can be planted at any time of the year. The majority of hellebores are listed for sale from late winter to early spring when they are in bloom, but you might locate one in a garden center’s clearance section in the summer that you can plant with no issues. Keep in mind that hellebores detest being moved after being planted, so avoid doing so.
How to plant hellebores
Hellebores should be planted in the same way as other perennials, with a spadeful of garden compost and a sprinkle of mycorrhizal fungi to aid in the plant’s establishment. Water thoroughly and gently press in.
Watch Monty Don’s instructional video on planting and growing hellebores to learn about planting depth, soil preparation, and how to prevent leaf spot disease. Additionally, Monty discusses how to select the best flowers for immediate effect and displays the variety of his collection of hellebores:
How to care for hellebores
When blossoms and new foliage appear, trim back the thick, leathery leaves, and mulch the plants every year with well-rotted compost or manure. Once established, hellebores struggle to be moved, therefore try to avoid doing so.
How to propagate hellebores
Avoid dividing hellebores since they struggle to be transported. In order to develop new plants for nothing, gather ripe seed and sow it into modules. Alternately, allow the hellebores in your garden to self-seed. By letting them self-seed at random, you’ll produce a hodge-podge of various colors and flower shapes; you might even develop your own new hybrid! No hellebore seedling will be true to its parents.
Growing hellebores: problem-solving
Leaf spot, a fungus infection that causes unattractive brown and black patches on the leaves, is the major foe of hellebores. When you see damaged foliage, remove it.
Here, Monty Don shows how to recognize hellebore leaf spot and describes how to prevent it from spreading to other plants:
Advice on buying hellebores
- Garden centers sell hellebores, but you can get a broader selection at specialized nurseries and online
- Avoid double-flowered hellebores if you are growing for bees because single-flowered plants are the best for pollinators.
Do hellebores like shade or the sun?
- Hellebores thrive in slightly shaded, evenly moist, well-drained soil.
- Long dry spells should be adequately hydrated; once established, they are drought-tolerant.
- Hellebores thrive in soil that has been greatly improved by organic matter.
- The Helleborus x hybridus (formerly known as Helleborus orientalis) hybrids prefer a soil pH that is close to neutral or even alkaline; if your soil is excessively acidic, add lime.
- The Christmas Rose (H. niger) may take some time to establish itself; to speed things along, consider adding some magnesium to the environment in the form of Epsom salts or dolomitic limestone.
- Early in the spring, apply a little amount of balanced, granular fertilizer to the plants.
What should you do with hellebores in pots in the summer?
How to care for fresh hellebore plants once you get them home from our nursery or when they arrive at your house via our mail order service is a question we are asked frequently. We believe the following guidance will provide all the information you require:
Please take away all the packaging from surrounding your hellebore and place the plant outside in a wind- and weather-protected location. This holds true year-round, even in the winter.
If the compost is dry, check it and place the plant in a saucer of water for an hour, making sure to take the saucer out once the hour is up.
Hellebores are extremely hardy plants that are happier in the ground than they are left standing in their pots, so plant as soon as you can.
It’s necessary to remove flower stamens and petals that have fallen into the plant if planting must be postponed due to cold or soggy ground conditions. This should be done every day up until planting out as it will help prevent the growth of grey mold, also known as botrytis, around the base of the flower stems or inside the crown in moist winter conditions. If there are any fungal issues, spray with a fungicide as soon as they show.
Even when planted, if your hellebore does become iced and rests flat, it will recover as the weather warms.
As long as the soil is not too dry or flooded, hellebores are quite tolerant and will grow in most soils, ranging from slightly acidic to slightly alkaline. In the summer, they can endure dryer circumstances as long as there is some shade, but too much shade all year can cause fewer blossoms. They thrive best when surrounded by deciduous shrubs and trees that will offer them with plenty of light in the winter and spring and some pleasant shade in the summer. They are resilient in the UK, with just a few exceptions, however they demand a sheltered location away from chilly winds. Hellebores will benefit from better drainage and easier access to the flowers if you put them on a sloped bed.
Hellebores have deep roots and require a lot of nourishment to flower at their best. Dig your soil as thoroughly as you can, then add lots of humus, such as leaf mould, well-rotted manure, leftover mushroom compost, or garden compost. When the ground is frozen or flooded, avoid preparing the soil; wait until the situation improves before planting.
Before planting, give your hellebore a good drink from below if it’s dry. Create a hole that is broader and deeper than the pot. Remove the hellebore carefully from its pot, then sprinkle If desired, root-grow mycorrhizal fungi onto the root before planting it at the same depth as in the pot and compacting the soil once more. There is no need to pluck out the roots because doing so harms their fibrous root system unnecessarily. After planting, thoroughly water.
In July/August, while the flower buds for the following year are forming, and again in late December, spread a humus mulch annually. Mulch shouldn’t be inserted into the plant’s crown as this could lead to the decay of the buds. Work in some blood, fish, and bone fertilizer and calcified seaweed fertilizer in the spring. Keep in mind to water your newly planted hellebores frequently for the first year. If you don’t need seed, remove the old, faded flower stalks around March or April to promote the growth of the new growth for the next year. In order to prevent greenflies, you can spray an insecticide and fungicide on occasion. You should also keep an eye out for slugs and snails on flower stems, new leaves, and flower buds, and treat them as necessary.
Helleborus x hybridus Ashwood Garden Hybrid should have all of its foliage cut back to the stems.
Hybridus H. Garden of Ashwood Remove all foliage from hybrids and deciduous species’ bases in late December or early January. This lowers the chance that any pests or diseases from the previous season would spread to the following season’s growth.
Only remove damaged or diseased leaf when necessary to tidy up evergreen species and interspecies hybrids (such as the Rodney Davey Marbled Group, H. x ericsmithii, H. x sternii, H. argutifolius, and H. foetidus) in late Autumn. Remove old flower stalks and leaves back to the root in late spring to reveal new, youthful growth there.
H. niger: After flowering, simply trim the damaged or diseased leaves and old flower stems as needed to keep the plant looking clean.
Hellebores are naturally deep-rooted plants, so choose a container with a decent depth and a broader top than base so you can remove the plant with ease when it has to be replanted. To avoid over-potting the plant and the possibility of it being soaked in damp unused compost, choose a container that is slightly larger than the present pot.
Use a high-quality compost, ideally one that is loam-based, like John Innes No 2 with additional grit for drainage. Put the container’s feet on pots. They require regular watering and feeding with a strong potash fertilizer like Chempak No 4 in the summer because they are hungry plants. Place the container where you can see it from the house while it is in bloom, then transfer it to a semi-shaded location in the summer. Repot plants every two years with new compost, or better yet, plant them outside in the garden.
You can uproot and divide your plant in September if you want to move it or it gets too huge. It is important to properly dig up the entire plant. When splitting, the huge root system is much easier to manage if all the soil is removed before cutting the root ball into single crowns using a knife or small saw. Replant the crowns in prepared soil and maintain shade and moisture, but be aware that it can take some time for the new divisions to recuperate.
Do hellebores spread?
Hellebore seeds will self-sow, yes. However, if you grow various species adjacent to one another, permitting them to do so can produce unexpected hybrids. Any new seedlings that are too close to mature plants should be thinned off. After three years, self-sown plants should begin to bloom.
Do hellebores need to be divided?
Even while it’s not typically necessary for the plant’s health, the best time to divide them is in the fall. In general, it’s better to just leave hellebores alone because they can be picky about being moved and dug up.
How is a hellebore cared for indoors?
This plant is really easy to care for and won’t consume much of your time. Keep the soil moist but let the top dry up throughout the winter.
To maintain the plant looking its best, remove any dead or damaged leaves as soon as they appear. Up to six weeks before to when you want the plant to bloom, move it to a cool spot. Trim the wasted flower stalks after flowering.
Early in the spring and then every three weeks until fall, feed the plant with a diluted balanced plant food. Every couple of years or when the hellebore’s roots grow confined, repot it. The plant can be moved outdoors in the spring and then brought back inside when winter draws near, if desired. If you want indoor flowers, just remember to give it that chilling period of time.
Penny’s Pink Hellebore
Whatever name you give them—hellebores, Lenten rose, winter rose—these plants are amazing! The genus name Helleborus is where the name “hellebore” originates. The majority of accessible hellebores are either hybrids (Helleborus x hybridus) or Helleborus orientalis.
There are not many perennials that are evergreen, flower, and grow in shade to part sun. And the only resilient winter bloomer in our region may be hellebore! Leathery leaves are always there; pick up damaged leaves as you see them or when you clean up after each season. Hellebore leaves are very resistant to deer and rabbit damage.
This perennial does the slumber, creep, then leap thing. The plant focuses on root development in the first few years, then the clump will get a little bigger, and if they are planted in a favorable spot and have had the correct care, they take off. We frequently speak with clients who planted them and then kind of ignored them. A few years later, these nearly forgotten plants emerge as the highlight of their shade gardens!
Hellebore Blooms
Older hellebore species feature nodding, downward-facing blossoms. The production of larger, upward-facing blooms has been the breeding goal. Additionally, new colors are being introduced; throughout this piece, we have included pictures of some of the hues that we currently have in stock as of March 2022. The sepals of the bloom are what we typically mistake for flowers; the actual flowers are barely noticeable.
Flowers typically come in the colors white, rose, purple, and green. While some types have double flowers, others have bicolor or streaked flowers. The diameter of a hellebore flower can reach two inches! Plant size, bloom color, and other characteristics vary according on the type.
Our perennial grower, Jen Mistretta, also offered an intriguing fact about the double blossoms. You may have noticed that double flowers typically have downward facing petals. Since water sheds well off of downward-facing blossoms, this growth pattern naturally shields the blooms from rain.
Where to Plant Hellebores
They prefer well-drained soil, just like many of our landscape plants; if the roots remain excessively wet, problems will develop.
We need cover from the sweltering midday sun here in central Arkansas. Plant in places with partial shade that receive morning or afternoon sun. Even though the plants thrive in shaded areas, if the shade is too heavy, their flowers may suffer.
How to Plant Hellebores
We advise enriching your soil before planting landscape plants because the soils in our region frequently contain clay and are deficient in organic matter. A decent ratio to keep in mind is a soil amendment of 30% to 70% native soil. Utilize our Good Earth brand Jump Start when planting to aid in the establishment of roots.
Before planting, make a note of where the plant crowns are located in the pot. The area at or just above the surrounding soil level is known as the crown, which is where the stems touch the soil. Plant deterioration or even plant death might result from planting hellebores too deeply. This is also valid for the shade perennials heuchera and tiarella, as well as their close cousins.
Digging a hole twice as wide and as deep as the root ball of the plant you are about to plant is a decent general rule of thumb. However, because hellebores are deep-rooted plants, you might want to dig farther than the pot and improve the soil there. This can be a bit problematic since, as we indicated above, it’s important to keep hellebore crowns above soil level. This is because the modified soil will settle a little. To ensure that crowns remain at least an inch above surrounding soil level, you may need to fiddle with the soil level if you decide to dig down and amend the soil at the bottom of the planting hole.
Feeding and Caring for Hellebores
Hellebores don’t need a lot of fertilizing; springtime applications of compost and a slow-release natural fertilizer ought to be adequate. When used as a top dressing of organic fertilizer, the Jump Start we indicated above performs admirably. Any fertilizer you use should be kept away from the plant’s crown because even light fertilizers might harm the crowns.
Applying too much mulch around crowns can prevent it from remaining above the surrounding soil and mulch, which is necessary. just a little mulching around hellebores.
Scale, a damaging insect pest, can infest hellebores. Scale are frequently found on the underside of leaves, making them simple to miss. Several times a year, check on your plants, and treat as necessary.
Although division is rarely necessary, it is possible to divide them in the fall if necessary. Ascertain that each division has three or more growth buds. The optimal time to transplant is also in the fall.