are these plants harmful

Many plants and seeds are harmful, but the Yew berries are most likely to harm anyone if eaten.

Yew berries are a deadly poison but the iris and hellebore should be okay. As Dr Bob says a lot of our garden plants are toxic.

Some people claim a rash from handling Hellebor seeds. This does not apply to me and I harvest a lot of these seeds with my bare hands.

Yew berries are the only part of the yew which is not poisonous. The seed in the berry is highly poisonous but has a hard coating so you would have to crush it to release the poison. There are reported cases of people being poisoned by a few berries because they bit into the seeds but there are others of people eating up to 40 berries and passing the seeds undigested. Someone once told me he ate hundreds of yew berries every year but spat out the seeds.

Hellebores are poisonous with the root, probably, being strongest. They are a strong emetic. However, you're not likely to look at a hellebore and decide to eat it.

Most poisonous plants have something unpleasant about the taste which explains why very few cases of accidental ingestion turn up at hospitals each year.

I think pets are more of a problem than grandchildren. You can teach the child not to munch anything it doesn't know to be harmless but it's harder to do that with pets.

In some ways, teaching a 3 year old not to munch the plants is the first step towards getting the teenager they will become to say 'no' to drugs.

Yes, I have experienced many young people being taken to hospital after eating berries and leaves. I have seen a horse die after eating Yew and have lost young piglets that have got out of their pen and eaten rhubarb, but as a general rule young children don't go around the garden looking for anything to eat.

i always encouraged my rug rats to show me what they thought they could eat and if they could, i'd let them try it. they still do it, just as well as i had some woody nightshade for the first time last year. obviously seed dropped by a bird.

Reminds me of that joke - What's the difference between a sprout and a boggy - you can get a child to eat a ........... Well that's quite enough of that! Depends on what pets you've got I think.....I have a cat and I know lillies are poisonous to cats - but I've yet to meet a cat that goes around browsing on gardens. Dogs might be more of a concern. Certainly yew is poisenous to horses and cattle - especially in its dried out form I understand.

I have an Iris Foet. and it had loads of pretty berries on it this winter. My cats and dog had no interest in it whatsoever. And that's saying something coz I've only a few plants left in my garden at the moment! I suppose dogs would only eat garden plants if they smelled tasty. The Iris berries are waxy, so don't emit any pleasant "tasty" smells!

We also have hellebores, again, pets not interested.