![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/cherokee\/files\/2016\/01\/Helleborus_orientalis-Bob_Gutowski-cc-by-nc-sa-2.0.jpg\")
<\/a>Once established they just do their thing without any fuss. Getting established may take a year, but during that time they look great and are an immediate evergreen addition to your yard. Most of my hellebores are Lenten rose or H. orientalis. They bloom late winter to early spring in shades ranging from white to plum, rose, pink, or magenta, some with contrasting spots inside each blossom. And they bloom for weeks. The flowers stay put for as long as eight to ten weeks, but, though still pretty, their colors fade. The leaves are about ten inches across with seven or more leaflets that are dark green and leathery with toothed edges. I also have several H. foetidus, or stinking hellebore, also called bear\u2019s foot hellebore. They are tall and upright with small, lime green, cup-shaped flowers. The bright green leaves have lots of very narrow leaflets, very different from H. orientalis. They also bloom from mid-winter to spring. It\u2019s a beautiful hellebore and only smells bad if parts are crushed or bruised.<\/p>\n
Maintenance on hellebores is easy. They have very few problems; deer and rabbit don\u2019t eat them, maybe because all parts are poisonous. But watch for slugs and snails. You may need gloves because the stems and leaves are a bit spiney, and touching them may irritate your skin. Planting and care are about the same for most hellebores. Plant them in shade with lots of organic matter, making sure they have good drainage, and they will serve you for many years. Fertilize with general landscape fertilizer when you see the first new green leaves, probably in November, then again in February when you see the flowers starting. In early spring, peek under the newer leaves and look for the older leaves that look a bit winter worn. Cut those off, being careful not to nip the new growth. Hellebores can be divided but really don\u2019t need to be. And they don\u2019t like to be dug up and moved \u2013 so don\u2019t make work for yourself. I don\u2019t remove old blooms; they\u2019re still pretty even when they lose their color. The seeds drop and make dozens of tiny seedlings. They won\u2019t all live, but leave them where they are until the second year, and then dig up a bunch with a lot of soil and move it to another shady spot. The seedlings probably won\u2019t come true to the parent, but that\u2019s OK with me. It\u2019s fun to see what you\u2019ll get! Gardening is, after all, a lot about anticipation. If you don\u2019t want any seedlings, just remove old blooms.<\/p>\n
My hellebores have come over the years from friends\u2019 yards, plant sales, plant swaps, garden centers, and as gifts. The blossoms are all of the \u201cnodding\u201d variety, meaning they face the ground. I plan to\u00a0check out a few of those new cultivars, such as \u2018Ivory Prince\u2019, \u2018Red Lady\u2019, and \u2018Pink Frost\u2019, whose blossoms face upward! \u2018Ivory Prince\u2019 blooms white, then in a few weeks turns bright lime green. \u2018Red Lady\u2019 is tall and bushy with deep maroon flowers. \u2018Pink Frost\u2019 has burgundy stems, silver-frosted leaves, and flowers of white, pink, and deep rose.<\/p>\n
What I want you to take away from this is that I hope you\u2019ll plant some hellebores; they\u2019re beautiful, rewarding, easy care, and add year-round beauty to the shady areas in your gardens. And be sure to look for the new ones whose blossoms face the sky!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Gail Roos: UGA Master Gardener Extension Volunteer-Cherokee County Originally published in Cherokee County Master Gardener Newsletter Volume 12: issue 1 December 2014 Here\u2019s why I love hellebores: they\u2019re evergreen, tough, long-lived, shade-loving, deer and rabbit resistant, and quietly beautiful year-round. Add to that \u2013 they start flowering in the dead of winter when our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":265,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,27,4,71,67],"tags":[78,77,80,79],"class_list":["post-263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-evergreen","category-flowers","category-home-landscape","category-perennial","category-plant-profile","tag-deer-resistant-plants","tag-hellebores","tag-poisonous-plants","tag-rabbit-resistant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/cherokee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/cherokee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/cherokee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/cherokee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/cherokee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/cherokee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":268,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/cherokee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions\/268"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/cherokee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/cherokee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/cherokee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/cherokee\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}