The last time I visited Ashwood Nurseries to look at their hellebores was fifteen years ago. We’d just made an offer on Hillside and, despite the fact we had yet to sell our house in Peckham, it felt timely to tentatively celebrate. I remember that grim February day very clearly. The rain beating down on the polytunnel where the hellebores are housed and the delight in seeing such high horticulture in practice. We left with a selection of spotted whites and yellows and drove alongside a double rainbow on the hissing motorway on the way home. I wished upon it whilst glancing in the rear-view mirror at my nodding purchases, wishing, without wanting to jeopardise luck, that our deal would go through and that the hellebores would somehow weight destiny. 

In the intervening years, and with the good fortune of now having room to grow them, I have purchased a small number every year to build the colour range of the collection. Combing the Ashwood website, greens one year, with spots, dark nectaries or thundery stained outers. Picotees the next, with the finest of cherry red rims or deeply veined interiors. Yellows – for they have got better – a couple of years running and last year a grey and the best black I’ve ever seen with inkiness pervading the foliage. February, however, is a short and always busy month and in all this time I have not made it back, but this week I attended one of their hellebore talks and had the privilege of hand picking this year’s purchases.