A garden club I belong to got together and bought a flat of 100 seedling hellebores from him a couple years back, then resold them as an internal fundraiser for about $3 each. I had understood these to be his "normal" stock, but likely to throw doubles. I bought 10, thinking that the odds were good of getting something better than what I had already gotten from local nurseries, which weren't too shabby to start with -- a dark purple upward-facing single, medium purple with dark freckles and a pale wire-edge, white with maroon freckles, and so on. With no other basis to go on, I chose babies with as diverse types of leaf as I could -- the longest, the shiniest, the roundest, the most serrated, and so on. Well, they have now bloomed; the results are somewhat more diverse than my starter stock, but only one is more than interesting (a dark-purple double.) Three of the 10 I have already dug up and given away as butt-ugly: petals striped green and pink. Most are pink with darker freckles, but show signs of having larger blossoms as adults than my old stock, and a couple are OK pale whites, one with longer pointier petals than the norm. Bottom line: I wouldn't bother doing this again, but it was a worthwhile experiment. I am disappointed in not getting more doubles, but my selection method could have been at fault.

Barry published a schedule of where he will be selling at plant sales -- worth buying from him if he is within easy reach.

LynnT

I am a newbie to Hellebores, but I love them because they are so easy to grow. can you send me a link to this Barry nursery site?