week 5: hellebores, salamander eggs, and other timely teachers
I was fighting the cues: wanting to get on with cutting miles of clean edges between turf and beds despite sodden soil (answer: don’t!) or rake some grassy areas that are still plastered with leafy, twiggy winter detritus but likewise still soft. Again: no can do, without pulling up the lawn.
As much as I want to make it all “just so” in time for Open Day next weekend—maybe I can’t.
The orientalis hybrid hellebores (Helleborus x orientalis) know about timing, often refusing to bloom for a couple or few years from transplant time until they settle in—when the gardener is all the while wondering what they did wrong (probably nothing).
Even once established, they wait and wait in a year like this recalcitrant one to arise and open, weeks after my “usual” hellebore moment. They finally got on with it last week (one photo of a little section of them, top of page).
They remind me to be not just patient but also adaptable, and those hybrid Lenten roses are that, too—blooming here mightily in my Northern garden in sunny spots, not just shady ones. The slate-colored clump below is one such example, with 50-something blooms (some not open yet when the photo was taken).
More on how hellebores work is in this interview with the late Judith Knott Tyler, hellebore breeder and author—who taught me to think of them like peonies: a bit slow to get acclimated (keep an eye on watering in the first year or two), then long-lived, and asking not much more once they do than an annual tidying of old foliage and maybe some compost.I have been cheered on in recent days by the first Read more on awaytogarden.com
