Glad that you mentioned helleborus. What are your helleborus doing - new leaf?flower buds emerging? or even blooming? Please tell us.

I have lots of shade area and love helleborus. In the past, I planted around 10, but now only 3 seem survived (by last fall's account). This spring, only one is showing some growth, the other two nothing, even though when I took off winter mulch in early Apr most leaves under the mulch was green -- most have since turned brown and papery. And last spring (2006), the flowers didn't show up until sometime in June, much later than Tulips, even later than Bleeding heart and PJM Rhodo.

My impression from reading is that helleborus is the first ones to bloom, even in snow, and I love THAT idea. Is that your experience?

BTW, my helleborus are Royal Heritage and Orientalis, I have 2 for 2 years and 1 for 1 year.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Thanks.

I planted 3-4 of them a couple years ago, in what I thought was a pretty sheltered spot, and they never came back. They are so pretty I would love to try again with better success.

Several are in full bloom (and very beautiful!), the rest are budding. I do mulch them with a couple inched of leaves. The only ones I've ever lost were a couple of very small plants and bareroots plants that I put in years ago. Well established plants are more expensive, but seem worth it.

BTW these are all H x hybridus (orientalis). I have H. feotidus for year or two but couldn't keep them going.

Ted

My one Helleborus Royal Heritage came from Home Depot, gallon pot. Planted late June, it bloomed the following spring. Now this, the second spring, it has been blooming for almost a month already. (I covered it with leaves during the cold snap.)

The first spring it almost immediately lost the evergreen leaves once I uncovered it in spring. This spring I uncovered it slowly and all evergreen leaves are still with me, although some are a bit tattered. Whether this had to do with age/aclimation of the plant, or slowly uncovering the leaves or both, I don't know.

I am happy for you guys with the blooming Helleborus. Are these lucky plants in sunny area in spring? Mine won't get much sun until mid May. Is that one reason? Maybe not, because in the same place one Royal Heritabe is putting up new leaves and flower buds while the other has barely shown one tine leaf shoot. Mystery!
Also I notice all my Helleborus put up a round of new leaves around late Sept. Are they suppose to do that?
Slowly uncover the winter mulch might a good experiement. Thanks for sharing the tip.

Ted,

None of my hellebores ('Royal Heritage' 'Ivory Prince' and foetidus) have any seedlings. The oldest are only 4 years old. The Royal Heritage and Ivory Prince plants were mulched with 6-8" of oak leaves over the winter and had large buds when I removed the mulch in mid-March. I too put the leaves back on during the 15 degree cold snap around Easter. All are blooming now and are sending up new leaves. I have removed almost all of the old leaves because they are pretty beat up at this point. Last year the blossoms on the Royal Heritage plants lasted into September.

The foetidus plants had about a foot of oak leaf mulch because I planted it last spring and it is theoretically zone 6. When I took the mulch off it had grown horizontally quite a bit. It will be interesting to see how foetidus does over the next few years.

Laura