A faithful reader named Grace emailed me to thank me for a recent column on patio-building. She added that much of the advice blew right past her. Back when she decided she needed a small patio by the kitchen door she made quick work of the project.
“I raked it, leveled a 20-by-20 area the best I could and used the standard colored cement tiles — I think the 5-by-10 or 6-by-12. Didn’t do any of the stuff that you had written about. The patio looks as good today as it did 49 years ago,” she wrote. “I will admit it did sag a little on one side, but I dug about eight blocks up, put some sand there and reversed the blocks, so part of it looks new. I did that maybe eight years ago. I make sure I have complete control of the weeds and ants. I use a power washer on it and it looks good all the time. Maybe I just got lucky, but money was scarce and I did want a patio, come hell or high water.”
I replied that heaving caused by freeze-thaw cycles is why my brick patio looks more like the Appalachian foothills than an airport runway. And this despite my having followed the instructions laid out in the column pretty much to the letter — at least compared to what Grace did.
Grace also wondered why I’d never written a word about hellebores. She loves the plant and is looking forward to seeing a few April blooms. Had I had a run-in with them?
Well, yes.
I love hellebores, too, at arm’s length. When in bloom they are among the most beautiful of all garden plants. I love seeing them in garden catalogs and in public gardens. I don’t love seeing them In my garden because they don’t love my garden.
I told Grace my best guess is that I don’t water them enough. I have the same problems with astilbes. They crisp up if they go a day without rain. Maybe it’s my excellent drainage, but I doubt it. Hellebores require excellent drainage. If they don’t have it, their crowns will rot.
More likely it’s my two enormous oak trees that suck up every ounce of available moisture. Over the years I’ve added more trees —birches, lindens and maples mostly — to create a barrier between my line of sight and the power poles that keep multiplying like bunnies in my back yard.
Hellebores are one of those plants the fashionistas love. If they were a handbag, they’d fly off the shelves at Nordstrom.
Martha Stewart has a thing for hellebores, according to Garden Design magazine’s recent write-up.
And why not?
They have dark green leaves and sturdy stalks from which protrude buds that are actually sepals (designed to protect true flowers) that, when they open, face the earth and not the sky.
This only adds to their allure. You have to lie down on the ground to pay proper homage to their shy beauty.
The flowers are abundant and as big in diameter as a tennis ball, with long stamens. Some hellebores have multiple sepals and others are single.
Another fetching trait is that they bloom early — so early that in our region the buds might freeze.
Imagine gazing out your window right now and spying a nodding flower wearing a bonnet of new-fallen snow.
That’s one of the looks you see in the catalogs — the harbinger of spring! — and why the hellebore is commonly called Lenten rose.
Helleborus niger, or Christmas rose, is pretty much off limits to us northern gardeners as it blooms in December and January.
The species we grow (Helleborus x hybrida) bloom from February until April and their leaves die back in winter, while the species hardy in Zones 6 through 9 are evergreen, meaning they hold onto their leaves all year-round. These are the ones that bloom in the depths of winter in places like New York City.
All hellebores are distinctive for their flower color — again sophisticated and subtle, whether the shade happens to be plum or mahogany or pale pink or the color of a bleached-out Granny Smith apple.
Hellebores don’t like to be planted too deep. Removing their leaves after blooming reduces the chance of fungal problems. They prefer woodland shade and benefit from an annual top-dressing of compost.
Until recently, named varieties were all but impossible to find, according to Garden Design. “Advances in propagation through division, tissue culture, and hand-pollination have resulted in more diverse flower colors, forms, patterns, increased plant vigor, and larger blooms.”
Jerry Fritz trials the newest hellebore cultivars at Linden Hill Gardens — this is not to be confused with the neighborhood across the river. Fritz lives in Ottsville, Pa.
He is excited by colors ranging from amber to near black as well as new taller varieties, outward-facing blooms, and patterns of speckling and veining that (along with the nodding flowers) make hellebores put me in mind of another popular spring bloomer that I’ve found hard to grow, Fritillaria meleagris.
Lenten roses are also deer-resistant. I know. I should have led with that. I don’t have deer either, so I tend to forget what a challenge they are to gardeners in the suburbs and rural and woodland areas of Minnesota.
I do have Japanese beetles and, no, hellebores are not resistant to JBs, but by the time the beetles show up, those lovely nodding flowers will be long gone.
