Julia's Hellebores

Here are some of the hellebores blooming at Julia's garden right now. I have been building a big deck and screened in porch all winter. Just a bonus to be there when these are blooming. These photos are of about 1/3 of the hellebores she has the others have not came out yet. She has promised me a few babies of these plants so I'm pretty excited.

One thing I wanted to bring up. Several people have mentioned that hellebores can sulk a year or so after transplanting them. This time last year we did not have any hellebores in this garden. I bought 3 expensive one gallon plants at the local nursery and they are getting ready to bloom. The other 10-12 plants we have were given to us and dug up  from two different gardens, all so far show signs of blooms in the future. Half out dug up plants were planted in the summer the other half were planted in the fall.

This one we dug a footer right up to it and it was partially covered with dirt for a short time, no harm done. This plant is almost 3 foot around. Likely my favorite.

Look at those pointy petals, oh my!

Very red, lots of blooms on this one!

This one was a sport I think all the other flowers around it were red. She says many of her hellebores are much redder than normal.

Many of these in one big cluster. We are planning in visiting Pine Knot Farms the local hellebore growers on March 06th during their Hellebore Festival 2010. Anyone wanting to join us in southern Virginia during the open house please let us know. We were planning on going on February 27th but figured since we have had so much unusual cold weather this year.

Testing out the macro capabilities of Meg's new camera (Coolpix S70). This is a daphne close up from the plant next to her front door. Just a few blooms so far so not aroma yet. This photo was taken from 5mm at 28mm 5mm set to 1/98 sec, f/3.9 at ISO 400.

Here is the porch I'm building there. The deck is 14 x 30 and the porch is 14 x 20. I built a shed under it as well. As you can see we still need a beaded board ceiling that will be painted haut blue and screen. The electrician was supposed to start today and the rest of the week will be too cold to paint the ceiling boards before installing them.