Hellebores as Cut Flowers
Helleborus ‘Anna’s Red’
Hellebores are notoriously difficult to condition. Place the stems in about 5 cms boiling water for one minute to force out the air. Re-cut the stems and leave overnight up to their necks in water. Placing them directly into buckets of water containing flower preservative can also give a vase life of more than two weeks. They last longer if picked when the seedpods are just beginning to form.
Both Helleborus ‘Anna’s Red’ and Helleborus ‘Penny’s Pink’ last well in water – up to three weeks without any special conditioning.
Bring the sparkling diversity of modern hellebores to your table by nipping off the individual flowers and floating them on water in an elegant bowl.
Diana Guy
Copyright © for this article and pictures by Diana Guy (2013). Reproduced with permission.
