White Helleborus

I didn't know I had white Hellebores in my garden until the other day; I thought I only had pink ones. Delightful enough, but finding a white one (one, so far!) makes me treasure this plant even more.

This is what it looked like on Saturday.

And yesterday . . .

. . . and today! Isn't it a gorgeous flower?

Last night's storm has really cleared the air. The sky is as blue as can be today. The temperature about ten degrees below yesterday's, but still very pleasant for the first of March.

As Spring Approaches . . .

It's an almost unbelievable phenomenon -- here we had a brutal winter (even snowed in for a week in January - that had never happened before in all my decades in Georgia) and now we are ending February with spring-like weather. What will March bring us?

The Hellebores are continuing a great presence in my garden. I read somewhere that they are an old, tough species of plant, having been known to grow, virtually undisturbed, in the same location for 40 or 50 years.

You will have noticed in plant nursery catalog that a Hellebore's flower is frequently photographed with the fingers of someone's hand underneath it. Logical! They grow low to the ground, with their faces turned down. So, other than cutting them, this is the only solution.

Last year, having received this bounty in 2009 from a gardening friend 50 miles away, only one plant bloomed (one bloom!); this year, that plant has several stems with multiple flowers. And a second plant has now gotten into the blooming act as well. I'm delighted!

Oh, no -- not another Koi Pond!

I am sick of koi ponds! At least four of the six gardens on today's Gwinnett County Master Gardener garden tour had them (the other two may also -- I did not go there; too far!).

There was a boring sameness about all four gardens. Not just the ponds, but also the plantings - Hellebores, Hydrangeas, Ferns, Japanese Maples. The only one deserving to be on a garden tour, for which people pay money to visit, was Shannon Pable's (small wonder - she is a professional garden designer). The Jones garden, next door, was nice, but in essence a small copy of the Pable garden (and unfinished) and the two on Lake Lanier had the lake as their best feature. There was nothing original or outstanding about them. In one of them the obligatory koi pond had these monsters in them -- three times the size of any koi I had seen before today.

Hello, Helleborus!

When Pat Bowen, to whom I owe my Master Gardener training -- indeed, my entire evolution as a gardener -- told me last year that Helleborus orientalis (Lenten Rose) does not necessarily require a lot of shade, I was skeptical. But, when she told me I could come to her 7+ acre garden and dig up some "babies" for my garden, I was there in no time at all. "Don't expect them to bloom next year (2010)", she told me. "They need time to mature, so give them a year or two." I was thrilled enough that all ten or twelve of them survived and did not expect what I saw today. Isn't this spectacular? A good omen for my 2010 garden?

A week ago today, I was playing in the snow, taking the kinds of photographs I have considered extremely rare for this part of the country. Today, in 60F/14C degrees, I had a great time having lunch outside on the patio, with birds in the trees and shrubs all around. Wow - such a change!

Winter in North Georgia

The bright red Dwarf Nandina is the only vibrant splash of color in today's dismal winter landscape; even the bird feeders are covered in snow and ice! The Helleborus is frozen, as are the Dwarf Indian Hawthorn and the Hollies. Those pathetic "jellyfish" things are Daisies. Anything with a cold-hardiness lower than 6 may not have survived last night's freeze and tonight it's supposed to get colder still. Now I know why Svetlana and Galina moved here from Siberia. It was not necessarily the business climate that attracted them; it must have just been the climate! They are probably feeling like they're back in their former home today. Brrrr!