A hazard of planting hellebores in March is that much of the surrounding garden remains dormant. It seems obvious that new hellebores must be planted where they can best be enjoyed when they are flowering in late winter, and this means planting along the driveway and the front walk where the garden is already quite…
Tag: hellebores
Adding hellebores
Fourteen hellebore cultivars await planting on the driveway, twenty five plants total at last count, though additions are likely. There seems no end to my collecting of marvelous varieties, which is madness, I suppose, as my wife has pointed out frequently in recent days. Already, there are dozens in the garden, and more seedlings than…
Mid February snow
This was inevitable, I suppose. I’ve been dismayed in recent weeks that hellebores were poised to flower with only another few days of slightly less frigid temperatures. A single day of relative warmth last week was not enough, and now they will be buried by snow with little chance that it will melt for another…
Hurry along
After a day or two in early February when temperatures rise more than a few degrees above freezing, the gardener becomes particularly anxious for spring to arrive. His patience is not helped at all by witch hazels and hellebores with buds that are ready to burst into bloom, and snowdrops that have flowered sporadically for…
Buds
After a flush of growth in autumn, the hellebores (Helleborus) are plump and now heavily budded. I have not yet removed the foliage so that the nodding flowers will be more evident when these begin to bloom in several weeks. Certainly, I’ll get around to this, at least by the time the first color begins…
A long time coming
Finally, peak bloom has arrived for most of the hellebore varieties (Helleborus spp.), though there are still a few stragglers holding out. With continued spring-like temperatures I suspect that all will be flowering within days, but with this late start it will be unsurprising when they fade more quickly than is typical. Hellebores are not…
Sneaking into spring
After several warm days, a few blooms of hellebores (Helleborus spp., above and below) have opened, just in time to be buried again by eight inches of snow. Of course, in March it is assured that snow will not last long, so I expect that many of the hellebores will reach peak bloom by the…
Cutting back the hellebores
Predictably, I failed to remove the foliage from hellebores before the flower buds swelled in late December, and now they are covered by many inches of wet snow. By mid January the buds were prominent, and there have been times when the hellebores flowered from late December until March. But, temperatures have been far too…
The winter’s worklist
Sleep, sleep, and cut back foliage on the hellebores. That’s it, that’s all I plan to accomplish between now and spring. Perhaps I’ll manage to work in a bit of time to continue to cut up the trunk of the tall maple that toppled over into the garden in last week’s ice storm. The top…
So, this is the first day of spring?
Today is spring? I’m not impressed. There should be no surprise that the weather on the first day of spring is not much different from the preceding three weeks, and much the same or worse is forecast for the next ten days. It’s not exactly cold, but this doesn’t feel like March, or spring. It’s…
The garden in February
I see no reason to attempt to convince anyone that growing flowers in their garden through the winter months is worthwhile. For someone who ventures outdoors only to get to the warmth of their automobile there is no earthly reason to make any effort to plant flowers that are never seen. I’m not crazy enough…
Ramblin' through Dave's Garden 