Helleborus Orientalis

The hellebore has had something of a renaissance in recent years and is a wonderful cut flower stem especially valued so early in the year. At a time when variety amongst English stems is at a premium, their beautiful colouring across a wide palette, subtlety of markings and form and wonderful lyrical lines add a certain depth and distinction to bouquets that is hard to replicate.

We grow them, as we grow many of our special stars, in a variety of locations to extend and bring forward their season. Many are nervous of hellebores as a cut flower as they have a reputation of being difficult to condition, that is to say prepare for their life in the vase.

We use a variety of techniques to manage this and find them, with care, extraordinarily reliable. Last year we were delighted to explore and discuss with the renown floral designer Philippa Craddock, our techniques for conditioning hellebores and to have inspired her to create her series Grower’s Notes, talking to growers and to kick off that series. Growers since have included such luminaries as Fern Verrow,  a wonderful organic and biodynamic grower whom we have long admired, the Land Gardeners, known for their gorgeous flowers and work on soil and compost, and the Wolves Lane Flower Company, a super London flower grower.  

Philippa developed with input from us and others, a great guide to conditioning hellebores - hop over to her Journal to take a look.

In essence, the hardest time to condition hellebores is before they have ‘set seed’, that is to say been fertilised early in the season by visiting bees, when perversely their flowers are most valuable to florists. At this time their stems need to be scored right up to their necks with a sharp knife and given a cool drink in fresh water to the tip of the scoring. This allows a much greater surface area to absorb precious water, the cut then callouses over sealing in the water and we find, done well, this allows the flowers to hold. 

Once fertilised, visible from swollen ovaries at the heart of the flower, all we do is sear the cut end of the stem in boiling water for about 10 seconds then give the stem a long cool drink. 

With these techniques we hope you can enjoy with confidence the extraordinary beauty that is the hellebore and feel confident to enjoy them as a cut flower.