Garden Notes

Lenten Rose blooming in front garden after replanting

After long admiring the Lenten Roses growing in my friend Joanne’s yard, last year I finally purchased a couple of plants to try in my own garden. I carefully situated them in partial shade close to our front window so I could admire their early blooms and went back to other gardening chores.

Unfortunately in an effort to keep water further away from our house during big rainstorms, my husband decided to add 4 inches of fill dirt around the foundation of our home. I dug out a lot of perennials including my new Lenten Roses, helped shovel in the fill dirt and replanted. That new soil was clay based with a good amount of small rocks, nothing at all like the garden soil that we covered up! Needless to say, I was not a happy gardener and was very concerned about all of my plants struggling to survive in that crummy new soil. I wondered if the  Lenten Roses would even make it through their first winter.

Luckily last winter was very mild in Wisconsin and all the plants survived. One of my new Helleborus is even blooming and the other one looks pretty healthy so I guess all is well. I found that I really like how the Lenten Roses look and have even decided to move some hostas from our front garden and replace them with more Helleborus since they were the earliest perennials to flower in my garden. Spring cannot come too early for me!

Research

Growing 15 inches tall and wide, Helleborus plants have palmate evergreen leaves growing from a thick rootstock. They produce nodding whitish or plum colored flowers that appear in late winter or early spring and last for 8 to 10 weeks. They like partial shade and well drained soil with plenty of humus. The foliage of the Lenten Rose makes an excellent ground cover and this plant can be effectively mixed in with hosta, ferns, brunnera and heuchera in shaded gardens. (In my garden they even grew in fill dirt!)