Helleborus Walberton's Rosemary

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I am in danger of becoming a Hell of a bore about Helleborus. In my last blog, I mentioned that the Waitrose weekend mag had a brief item on a new ‘heads-up’ hellebore and I expressed the hope that I might get one for my birthday. Well, earlier this week we called into our local garden centre and I spoke to the manager and gave him the article. Meanwhile, on display was a very expensive (£16.99) pink hellebore which was asking to be bought.

We went home and my wife said that she would give it to me for my birthday which is a month away. (I gave her an orchid on her birthday, which is on Valentine’s day, so giving plants is in the air.) After lunch, I hot footed it back to the garden centre and bore away a Walberton’s Rosemary. By doing some plant surfing, I’ve discovered that Walberton’s Rosemary (‘Walhero’) “was raised by plant breeder David Tristram, whose father had a large part in the development of the ‘Potter’s Wheel’ Christmas rose in the 1960s. David crossed one of his own selected seedlings of ‘Potters Wheel’ with a reddish H. x hybridus. In fact he tried this many times and finally raised just this one seedling”. And the rest is plant history.

The label that came with the plant claims that the large flowers ‘have been specially bred to look upwards’. To be honest, I’m not sure that that claim would pass the trades descriptions act. You can judge for yourself from the pix below. Apparently the flowers “gradually deepen in colour to a rich pinky-red over many weeks”, so we have something to look forward to.

Meantime, I’m really pretty pleased with my addition to the hellebore border, and am now pondering on a suitable place to plant it. A nice problem to have. And both my wife and I can enjoy it — one of the bonuses of giving a plant to a partner!

• 16 Feb, 2011
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