Hellebores: The Definitive Guide
Helen Derrin, Crocus plant doctor
January 2025
First-rate additions to the 'out of season' garden, hellebores will reliably produce a mouthwatering assortment of flowers at a time when little else is in bloom. As a result, they've become firm favourites with savvy gardeners, who crave colourful, easy-care displays from December to April.
Not only a joy to look at, the flowers are packed with sugar-rich nectar and high protein pollen, so they're a treat for early-rising pollinators, like the solitary bumble bees, looking for a quick and nourishing fix of essential nutrients. Choose some of the single forms to give them easy access.
Also, as the showy parts of the flowers are made up of waxy sepals rather than soft petals, each bloom can last as long as 3 months, while shrugging off torrential rain, hard frost and heavy snow.
Sought after for their beauty as well as their brawn, the flowers of these tough, evergreen perennials range from pure white to near black, with all the shades of pink and purple in between. There's also apple greens and even yellows, and many of them come with striped, speckled or picotee colouring to their 'petals', while flower forms vary from simple singles to extravagantly ruffled rosettes. The selection really is enormous, so choosing your favourites is no mean feat - and you can never have enough.
Can I grow hellebores in pots and containers?
Most hellebores will put on a terrific seasonal show in a pot or container, provided their big, fleshy roots are given plenty of room to spread and grow. For this reason, choose deep pots and fill them with a 50/50 mix of soil-based John Innes No.3 and good quality general purpose potting mix.
While they're quite lovely on their own, you can notch up the display by teaming them with a selection of complementary evergreens like trailing ivy, elephant's ears, sweet box or skimmias. For added colour, pop in some winter-flowering pansies or primulas and underplant with your favourite spring flowering bulbs.
With such dense planting the display will be fabulous, but there'll be stiff competition for water and nutrients. Therefore, to prevent the plants from drying out, keep the pots well watered and out of direct sunlight, and after the display is past its best, decant the plants and replant them into a forever-home in the border.
Can I cut hellebores for the vase?
Hellebores make lovely cut flowers, but for the longest lasting displays, simply snip off the flowerheads and float them in a bowl of water. Alternatively, stems can be cut for a vase, but to prolong their lifespan, use a sharp knife to make an incision along the side of the stems before plunging them into water. They'll look terrific with daffodils, or sprays cut from early flowering trees and shrubs.
A few plant combinations to maximise the display
Hellebores are enormously adaptable perennials, so they offer terrific scope to forge marvellous displays. Most will thrive in the lightly dappled shade of an overhead canopy, so will make wonderful understory planting beneath deciduous trees and shrubs such as witch hazel, birch or dogwoods.
For a naturalised look in a woodland, cottage or urban garden
Plant your preferred hellebores in oddly numbered groups, or set them out to form irregular drifts. Then, add extra colour by scattering (and planting where they fall) spring flowering bulbs such as snowdrops, crocus, grape hyacinths, daffodils and convallaria.
To build displays that will last year-round, team them up with a selection of perennials that flower in procession, allowing each to take their turn in the spotlight as the seasons progress. Things like shade-tolerant spurges, herbaceous cranesbill, meadow rue, toad lily, and Japanese anemones would all work really well together.
Focus on foliage for form and structure
Even when not in flower, the foliage of a hellebore can put on a lush and lovely display that will add interest and definition to a planting scheme. Maximise this by combining them up with other strongly defined leaf shapes, such as those found on hostas, evergreen ferns, or bergenias. By playing with form and texture you can build a display that's visually interesting throughout the year, while also having some stand-out seasonal interest to look forward to.
Create a haven for wildlife
If you like sharing your garden with wildlife and want to encourage even more, then hook your hellebores up with foxgloves, sarcococca, pulmonaria and native primroses. If space allows, add a flowering quince, crab apple and honeysuckle.
Which hellebores should I choose?
For long lasting displays, opt for a mix that will flower in succession, kickstarting the pageant with early-flowering Christmas roses (Helleborus niger). As their common name suggests, their exquisite blooms resemble species roses, despite belonging to the buttercup family. Wonderful in the winter garden, these hellebores could also be potted up and brought into a cool, bright room for a short period if you're looking to brighten up the decor.
Lenten roses or Oriental hybrids (Helleborus × hybridus) are a little later into flower, but are perhaps the most popular (and diverse) members of the group. Full of vim and vigour, they come in a veritable smorgasbord of colours and forms - all of them lovely. Also, as they've been bred for their flowers to face outwards rather than downwards, they tend to be a bit showier than some of the others. Both Christmas and Lenten roses will do well if potted up for a seasonal display.
If you've a patch of dry or heavy shade, H. foetidus will add colour and presence with its slender, fingerlike foliage, and generous trusses of plush-green, bell-shaped flowers. This British native and AGM holder is a striking plant, and you shouldn't be put off by its common name of 'stinking hellebore'. It does produce a slightly meaty smell when the foliage is crushed, but it's barely noticeable to most. If you do have a sensitive nose, tuck it well away from a path or border edge where you won't be brushing past it.
The Corsican hellebore (Helleborus argutifolius) is another noteworthy species, best suited to larger borders or more naturalised planting schemes where its splaying stems can be given room to stretch out. Forming a low mound of sharply toothed foliage, topped with generous clusters of zesty, lime-green flowers, it illuminates partial shade, while also providing a pleasing backdrop for early-flowering bulbs. Another AGM winner, Helleborus argutifolius is a handsome and architecturally interesting plant that adds year-round allure. "
Alternatively, if colour's your thing, here's a few of our favourite combinations.
Green and white
i.e. Helleborus × hybridus 'Double Ellen White' and Sarcococca confusa. Understated and elegant, white is particularly useful for adding light and visual appeal to shadier corners.
Blue and yellow
i.e. Helleborus × hybridus Harvington double yellow and Siberian squill (Scilla siberica).
Burgundy and lime
i.e. try Helleborus × hybridus Harvington red and hakonechloa (H. macra 'All Gold'). Polar opposites on the colour wheel, the burgundy adds depth and drama, while a zest of lime keeps it light and bright.
Pink and blue
i.e. try Helleborus × hybridus Harvington double blush and grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum).
Rich and brooding
i.e. try Helleborus × hybridus Harvington double chocolate with Skimmia japonica 'Rubella'. Simmering shades look opulent, but for maximum impact, try to plant them against a lighter backdrop, so they can really pop.
Keeping your hellebores happy and healthy
How, when and where to plant Hellebores
Long-lived and hardly ever targeted by slugs and snails, hellebores will grow happily in most soils, as long as they're reasonably fertile and kept evenly moist but not waterlogged.
They can be planted at any time of the year, provided the ground isn't frozen, however the optimum time is during the cooler weather from autumn to spring. Before you begin, dig in lots of well-rotted leaf mould or organic matter, and set plants out at 45-60cm intervals.
Like many ornamental garden plants, hellebores can be toxic to animals and humans if ingested, and contact may cause a mild skin irritation. Therefore, we suggest popping on a pair of gloves before handling them.
Ongoing maintenance
Hellebores are quite heavy feeders, so a generous mulch of well-rotted organic matter in autumn and a top-dressing of general-purpose fertiliser (such as Vitax Q4) each spring will help keep them in tip-top condition.
Water well after planting, and to help establish deep root growth, maintain moisture levels throughout their first summer, particularly if they're planted under large shrubs or trees.
It's also good practice to cut the older leaves right back to the ground in January or February. Not only does this allow the newly emerging flowers to be seen at their best, but it also helps keep the plants free of fungal diseases (such as leaf spot) if present.
You may also want to remove the spent flowers before they can set seed because hellebores are notoriously promiscuous plants, and will cross-pollinate freely if you've more than one in the garden. Some think of this as a bonus, but the flowers produced on home-grown seedlings are rarely as pretty as those on named varieties - which have taken specialist breeders many years to develop. The choice is yours.
