Lovely - it's interesting that your hellebores are out before anything else. Mine have appeared at the same time as a lot of other spring stuff.

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And the same clump in the background showing what else is out at the same time.

H foetidus - it's been out a while now.

Congratulations! Very exciting!

Enjoyed the pictures Flora. Always enjoy seeing what others have planted around their hellies. Spring has not quite reached our area yet, but the foetidus are up as always and the hybridus have buds up out of the ground.

I find in my gardens the xhybridus are some of last hellebores to bloom. In my old garden where I grew a variety of different hellebores, foetidus and argutifolius were reliably in bloom in January, sometimes earlier. In my current garden all my hellebores are still in containers (I just moved last fall) but 'Ivory Prince' and 'Cinnamon Snow' have been blooming since early January. All the xhybridus are now also in bud or bloom as well but started a good 6 weeks later than the others.

I don't really consider hellebores as signs of spring -- at least in my area they are in bloom well before most other recognized harbingers of spring like the early bulbs and forsythia. One of the reasons I value these plants so much is that they can reliably be expected to offer winter flowers and color, at a time when not much else is going on.

GG the hellebores are a little late this year but even so they have been in flower for several weeks now. The stems just get longer. The flowers stand well so they carry on as the snowdrops fade, the crocuses come and go and they are still around for the tulips. The ones in the photo started as a single unnamed seedling which I chose for the dark colour. The rest are its offspring. The foetidus has been around since Christmas.