Hellebore season is underway!

It's been nice weather up until the next three days here in North Carolina where it will be in the teens or low 20s. I walked around and photographed what is blooming. The hellebores are just getting started here. Looking forward to more to open soon.

 

Swirling Skirts!

 This one is so round!

 Above and below are the same flower.

 Merlin

Helleborus foetidus

2016 is looking good so far in our garden!

We took a 2 week travel trip over Christmas and New Years, when we returned the garden surprised us with so much blooming. It had been very warm for December and the area also had record rain falls.

I managed to get these photos of most of what was blooming. more hellebores will be opening soon. It is going down to 19 degrees tomorrow night, the open camellia blooms will brown out for sure.

One more thing we are starting our 8th year at this garden blog, time flies doesn't it. Sorry we don't get much time on this blog, spend too much time on Facebook.

Daphne is in full bloom in a pot, I was not able to take in the aroma today, it was in the mid 50s. We lost 2 other daphnes in the last winter, so we are down to one.

 I think this camellia is Greensboro Red, the flower is huge, 4-5 inches around! This shrub is around 5 foot tall and just starting to get more than a few blooms on it.

 This pink camellia is Debutante, a very old camellia. I find this camellia in gardens all over, even in Louisiana last week.

 Here is an locally crossed variety of camellia from Chapel Hill. It is called Crimson Candles and is featured in the photo above and below..

 This candy striped camellia is called La Peppermint. It is a slow grower and we find the flowers to open when its very cold and some years the frosts gets all the blooms before it opens.

This hellebore is one of my babies, I have two of these blooming in the garden right now. Babies I mean crosses that seeded in our garden by the help of bees.

 This hellebore is doing very well as you can see. We almost lost this plant a few years ago, it has recovered. It is a H. niger cross that is sterile, no babies from this one.

 Here is a sweet double hellebore that is doing great in the garden.

Below is a H. niger cross called Merlin. Sorry for the bad photo. It did poorly last year, doing great this year.

Below is some tommy crocuses that were a total surprise in the garden.

 This crocus was in another portion of the garden, not sure if it is a tommy or another species.

Plant Delights and Juniper Level Botanic Gardens

We went to the open house at Plant Delights Nursery yesterday, the focus was on hellebores. It was at least 10 years since I visited there, back then I didn't know what a hellebore was. I do recall spending $125 and getting a box and a half of plants, this time $125 bought a half box of plants. Just about everything they sell is rare and unusual, so one would expect to pay more.

Some impressive gardens don't you think?

One thing that was a surprise was all the trillium in the gardens, never seen so many in all the years I have been gardening.. 

The gardens are called Juniper Level Botanic Gardens

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Meg, bought the above trillium Oconee Yellow, we have a few trilliums in our garden. Maybe one day we'll have a mass of trilliums like shown below.

 I'm a big fan of cyclamen we have maybe 6 varieties in our garden, I added 2 more today, one of them a white blooming cyclamen.

Ok now for some hellebores from the gardens.

Above is a single flowering hellebore.

Here is a semi double hellebore.

Above and below some very nice double hellebores.

 Yellow hellebores used to be somewhat rare, not anymore.

 This semi double I've love to have in our garden one day.

 Below is Penny's Pink we have it in our garden expecting it to open up any day.

Garden Walk April 06, lots blooming!

Folks, its likely the best time of the year for flowers in our garden. We are finally getting it to what we want. OK yeah right. Part of the joy of gardening in experimentation and exploration.

Anyway there is a lot of photos to share, let me begin..

  Creeping phlox.

  Creeping phlox and primrose together.

 Creeping phlox.

 Woodland phlox.

Muscari with an honey bee!

Pansies, we have lots of different pansies, this is just one of them. Survived an 8 degree night this past winter as you can see. Planted last fall.

 Daffodil 'Hawera'

 Daffodil ' Mt Hood'

Daffodil 'Actaea' Showy and tall makes a great cut flower!

 Daffodil 'Broadway Star' one of my favorites for sure.

Daffodil 'Sailboat' These produce a lot of flowers!

Daffodil 'Sir Winston Churchill'

 Daffodil 'Quail' at least I think it is Quail.

Daffodil 'Pipit'

Daffodil 'Sound'

Daffodil 'Delibe' drop dead gorgeous!

 Daffodil 'Pink Charms' never seen any pink on this.

Daffodil 'Silver Smiles'

Daffodil 'Falconet' Nice..

 
Snow Flakes!

 Penny's Pink hellebore. Wow wow!

 Bleeding Heart, this is our newest one Meg brought back from Wilmington! Nearly 3 foot tall.

 This is a tiny Wild Bleeding Heart. About 6 inches tall.

Bleeding Heart from the front garden.

 15+ year old primrose. The oldest in our garden. Has been known to shoot about 50 stems of blooms, slow to burst this year.

 We've had this primrose 3 years, man its crazy.

I split this primrose when we planted it, the other plant looks almost as good as this one.

 Blue primrose

 Red primrose

Purple primrose.

Native anemone "Windflower"in our garden.

Our newest camellia, Camellia X 'Tiny Princess'. Meg and I visited the Coker Arboretum in March of 2010 and saw this blooming with thousands of fallen flowers covering the ground. Anyway Camellia Forest had it and I brought it home, see my post from 2010 about it with photos at