{"id":16998,"date":"2015-02-05T09:25:35","date_gmt":"2015-02-05T09:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newclone.retiremove.co.uk\/blog\/?p=16998"},"modified":"2015-02-05T09:25:35","modified_gmt":"2015-02-05T09:25:35","slug":"heavenly-hellebores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newclone.retiremove.co.uk\/blog\/heavenly-hellebores\/","title":{"rendered":"Heavenly Hellebores"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"hel\"<\/a><\/h3>\n

With a flowering season from winter to late spring, plants in the hellebore family are a great asset in our gardens says LOUISE MIDGLEY<\/h3>\n

The influential garden designer and horticulturalist, Gertrude Jekyll, is partly responsible for the popularity of hellebores today. Her use of them in her garden at Munstead Wood, Surrey, over a century ago, fuelled a wide interest from enthusiastic plant breeders and keen gardeners that is still going strong.<\/p>\n

Today modern plant breeders continue to introduce exciting new hardy hybrid varieties in new colour combinations, complex double forms and delicate shapes and habits.<\/p>\n

As a plant family they are relatively easy to cross breed and will readily produce an array of new shades. In our own gardens, when there is more than one variety, you only have to wait for self-sown seedlings to flower, to see they are rarely like the parent plant.<\/p>\n

It takes the expertise of professionals to create exceptional new hybrids from the gene pool of species plants and a keen eye and oodles of patience will undoubtedly have gone into their development.<\/p>\n

Must have new varieties<\/h4>\n

\"hya\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One such skilled expert Charles Valin, head of plant breeding at the Suffolk based mail order, seed and plant company, Thompson & Morgan, has bred a beautiful new crested variety of hellebore, which is available for the first time this year.<\/p>\n

Richly-coloured blooms, some of which resemble miniature waterlilies, unfold into layers of delicate petals each with their own individual patterned markings in an eclectic range of purples, pinks, greens and creams. These new crested hellebores can be found in the collections of \u2018Washfield Doubles\u2019 and \u2018Hybridizers Mix\u2019 from Thompson & Morgan.<\/p>\n

The great advantage of specialist online sites is being able to buy unusual plants that are rarely seen in local garden centres and are more often than not competitively priced. www.thompson-morgan.com<\/a> \/ 0844 573 1818<\/p>\n

\"hyf\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Get them off to a good start<\/h4>\n

Give new hellebores the best possible start by improving soil with garden compost or leaf mould but avoid covering the crown when planting. These clump-forming plants originate mainly from mountainous and woodland regions of Europe and are happy in most soils, except those that are very acidic.<\/p>\n

They flower well in shaded areas or in dappled shade between deciduous trees or shrubs where some shade is offered from the heat of the sun in summer.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s common practice to remove all old foliage from mature plants at the first sight of emerging flowers to afford them plenty of light and space. Any leaves that present with large brown patches, a disease called black spot caused by the Coniothyrium hellebori<\/em> fungus, to which they are prone, should be destroyed.<\/p>\n

Feed plants during late summer and early autumn while flower buds are forming to ensure a good display. They are rather partial to a mulch of mushroom compost but any complete fertiliser, be it pellets, powder or liquid will do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With a flowering season from winter to late spring, plants in the hellebore family are a great asset in our gardens says LOUISE MIDGLEY The influential garden designer and horticulturalist, Gertrude Jekyll, is partly responsible for the popularity of hellebores today. Her use of them in her garden at Munstead Wood, Surrey, over a century […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":16999,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_analytify_skip_tracking":false,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[30],"yst_prominent_words":[7771,3475,7774,7775,330,2920,421,260,7772,7770,1231,7769,7768,7773,1262,2359,2349,4804,2363,2410],"class_list":["post-16998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gardening","tag-gardening-2"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-25 21:08:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newclone.retiremove.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newclone.retiremove.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newclone.retiremove.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newclone.retiremove.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newclone.retiremove.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16998"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/newclone.retiremove.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17022,"href":"https:\/\/newclone.retiremove.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16998\/revisions\/17022"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newclone.retiremove.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newclone.retiremove.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newclone.retiremove.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newclone.retiremove.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16998"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newclone.retiremove.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=16998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}