It was not until the 1960's that English hybridizers started to tinker with it. Now English and North American breeders are fast improving Lenten roses. New flower colors, ruffled and double blooms, fancy picotee flowers, and flowers with an astounding variety of freckled or splotched petals are now available. Taxonomists, always eager to reclassify plants and confound gardeners, have declared that the popular new hellebores warrant a new name, H. hybridus. They are hardy in Zones 6 through 9, but it is the rare garden shop that carries them.
Hellebores thrive in loamy soil enriched with plenty of compost.
Lenten roses are less demanding, and more robust. Helleborus hybridus is said to self- sow readily, but I've never seen a volunteer in my garden. In another month or so the papery pods, as fat as tiny sausages, will start to pop open, and the round black seeds will vanish into the shadows around my plants. I'm planning to catch a few seeds this year and plant them where I can keep an eye on them.