Why do you hang your little head hellebore? This is the question I ask, as I have to lay flat on the ground to capture a shot of these pretty flowers.

They are actually rather cleverly avoiding filling up with rain and rotting and I suppose the fact that you have to hold and turn the heads of these flowers to see their full glory is part of their charm.

Commonly called Christmas rose I’ve planted mine in dappled shade under the nut tree alongside primroses, wood anemones, snowdrops and early bulbs with a few ferns to provide some contrast.

The fact is, everyone should have a few of these winter flowering beauties in their garden, they are easy to grow, fully hardy and you can find one to suit most conditions.

For clay soil: amazingly able to cope with heavy wet soil and probably the most well known is the Helleborus x hybridus (Lenten rose) which comes in single and double flowered form in a large variety of colours.

For well drained soil: choose Helleborus x ballardiae – the blue-green evergreen foliage provides a lovely background for the clusters of pink flowers – look for ‘Pink Frost’.

For Sunny Spots: Helleborus odorus is the easiest and most vigorous with good-sized, scented flowers sometimes as early as December.

Stone Walls?! Yes even in stone walls! Nature sometimes does this anyway but you can tuck seeds/seedlings of evergreen Helleborus foetidus (stinking hellebore) into the cracks of the shady side of a wall.

Diseases: although largely trouble-free they can suffer from a few diseases:

Leaf spot – a fungal disease, the leaves develop large brown blotches, turn yellow and die.

Black death – this is a virus thought to be spread by an aphid causing black streaking resulting in stunting and eventually death.

Downy mildew – a fungal disease causing mould like growth under the leaves. The control for all three of these unfortunately is to remove and destroy the affected plants to avoid spreading to other plants.

Removing old leaves on stem-less varieties in late winter/early spring helps to remove diseased foliage, helps insects to pollinate and you get to see the flowers better as the buds emerge.

You could pop along to Broadview Gardens at Hadlow College, near Tonbridge, which house the National Collection of Hellebores.