The Hellebore Specialists

We are very pleased to announce that our website’s Hellebore Shop is now open for the 2024 season.

We have a wonderful selection of Hellebores available this year, 60 varieties in total. This total includes several new varieties that have not been offered previously.

The Hellebores are, as usual, looking good and are ready to be planted out now and over the next few months.

Please be aware that there may be some delays in us getting orders out to you. As usual we are expecting lots of orders early on which usually exceeds our capacity to get orders posted, at least for a few weeks. This year we have added an extra mailout day to help clear the backlog, but we are a small operation and there is only so much we can do. So please be patient and expect delays of around 2-3 weeks till we can dispatch your order.

We have been very busy so far this season attending the Melbourne International Flower Show before Easter and Collectors Plant Fair in Sydney, just last weekend.

Thank you for your support and happy gardening.

Click here to visit our Hellebore Shop

We hope you have enjoyed a good flowering season with the Hellebores in your garden. With a dryer Winter this year than the previous couple the Hellebores have been much happier, at least in this part of the world. Thanks again to all those who have ordered from us this year and visited the Nursery over Winter.

In the garden, now is the time to remove spent flowering stems, apply some mulch around the Hellebores and keep an eye out for aphids.

Online Hellebore Shop closing

This is the last call for any Hellebore orders for this year. We have just updated the Website Shop and there are still plenty of varieties available. The website Shop will be closing later this week, so get any orders in ASAP please and we will be posting them out next week.

To go to the website shop click here.

Sale of larger flowering sized Hellebores.

We have a limited stock of our 2 year old flowering sized plants in 200mm pots left at the Nursery. These have finished flowering. They are only available for pickup from the Nursery until the end of October. We cannot post these plants. These are all part of our breeding program. Mixed colours only. We are selling these for $15 each (half price), with a minimum purchase of 10 plants. If you would like to order please email to: peter@postofficefarmnursery.com.au

We have been enjoying a good run of mild sunny weather here in the Macedon Ranges over the past six weeks or so. We are almost finished pollinating our stock plants for this season and we are midway through tubing up next years Hellebores. All reports are that Hellebores in gardens in this part of the world have also been enjoying the mild sunny weather over Winter as well.

We had a visit from the Better Homes and Gardens crew last month and a story on Hellebores by Melissa King and featuring Post Office Farm Nursery is available to view here.

The Nursery will continue to be open over the next three Sundays (final Open Sunday is September 24th). So if you had been thinking of a visit, now is the time. Still plenty of plants in flower to see. Talk on Hellebores and nursery tour at 11am on each Sunday we are open. You can get directions and other information about our Open Sundays here:

Details about our Open Sundays

Our Online Hellebore Store is still open with a huge range of Hellebores ready to be posted out to your door. It is not too late to plant Hellebores and we still have many varieties still available, so if you need a few more Hellebores for the garden have a look at the selection here:

Visit the Online Hellebore Store

We had a visit from the Better Homes and Gardens crew last month and a story on Hellebores by Melissa King and featuring Post Office Farm Nursery is available to view here.

Details about our Open Sundays

Visit the Online Hellebore Store

Starting from Sunday June 4th, Post Office Farm Nursery will be open to the public. We will be open to visitors on Sundays only from June 4th till the end of September.

Our sales area is undercover and we are about an hour’s drive from most parts of Melbourne.

We will have the usual extensive range of smaller one year old seedlings in 75mm tubes available for sale. We also have larger Hellebores in flower which are only available from the Nursery. This year we expect most of the larger flowering sized plants to be available during July and August. Also at 11am on every Open Sunday there will be a talk about getting the best out of your Hellebores and a tour of the Nursery.

You can get directions and other information about our Open Sundays here:

Details about our Open Sundays

The Online Hellebore Store is also open with a huge range of Hellebores ready to be posted out to your door. Winter is an ideal time to plant Hellebores and we still have most varieties still available, so if you need a few more Hellebores for the garden have a look at the selection here:

Visit the Online Hellebore Store

If you have not done so already, now is the ideal time to remove the old foliage on established Hellebores and give them a feed.

For Helleborus x hybridus varieties that have been planted for two or more years and are a reasonable size you can remove all of the old foliage right down to near the base of the plant. Leave any new growth. This will tidy up your plants and show off the flowers this winter to better effect. For the taller shrubby species Hellebores such as H. argutifolius, H. lividus, H. x sternii or H. foetidus, don’t remove the foliage now, wait till after flowering in spring. Also a good idea to remove any build up of mulch or leaves from around the base of the plant to allow for good light and air movement.

At the same time you can give your Hellebores some food. Any complete fertiliser (ie one that has nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous) such a dynamic lifter or osmocote will be fine. A light dressing of dolomite lime will also be appreciated.

We are very pleased to announce that our website Hellebore Shop is now open for the 2023 season.

We have a wonderful selection of Hellebores available this year, 64 varieties in total, a new record. This total includes five new varieties that have not been offered previously.

The Hellebores are looking particularly good this year, having enjoyed the weather of the past six months or so.

I also wanted to draw your attention to a very nice video featuring Post Office Farm Nursery which was made by Stephen Ryan and Matthew Lucas (The Horti-culturalists) on their Youtube channel last year. Lots of helpful information about Hellebores. Click here to go to the video.

Thank you for your support and happy gardening.

Click here to visit our Hellebore Shop

Upcoming Plant Fairs

Post Office Farm Nursery will be attending two Plant Fairs over the next few weeks.

Firstly we will be at our usual stall (B40) at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show which runs from Wednesday March 29th to Sunday April 2 at the Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens in Melbourne. We have been busy setting up over the past few days and the event is looking wonderful.

Then on the weekend of 14th and 15th of April we will be travelling north to attend the wonderful Collectors Plant Fair at the Hawkesbury Racecourse at Clarendon on the western outskirts of Sydney.

We hope to see lots of our regular Hellebore collectors at these two wonderful garden lovers events. More details on our website.

Hellebore Shop Update

For a number of logistical reasons (we just have too much to do in Late March) we have pushed back the usual opening date of our Website Hellebore Shop by a few weeks this year. We will be opening the Website Shop this year on April 11th, right after Easter. The one year old seedlings are looking fantastic this year and we have a very nice range of varieties all ready to get posted to your door.

We hope you have enjoyed a good flowering season with the Hellebores in your garden. Thanks again to all those who have ordered from us this year and visited the Nursery over Winter.

In the Nursery our Open Sundays are finished for this year and we are still tubing up the newly germinated seedlings which will be next year’s crop. We have finished hand pollinating thousands of flowers in the stock house and are about to spend several days placing our custom bags over all of the pollinated flowers to collect the seed.

In the garden, now is the time to remove spent flowering stems, apply some mulch around the Hellebores and keep an eye out for aphids. It has been VERY wet in most parts over the past year, so any Hellebores that have been adversely impacted by fungal issues should have the affected foliage and flowers removed and maybe followed up with a copper based fungicide spray.

Online Hellebore Shop closing

This is the last call for any Hellebore orders for this year. We have just updated the Website Shop with the varieties we still have available, some in very limited numbers. The website Shop will be closing at 6pm this Friday October 7th, with our final mailout happening next week.

To see which varieties are still available click here.

It has been an unusually late flowering season here in Ashbourne. The long period of very cold weather we experienced from late May has acted to slow down the progress of the Hellebores coming into flower. But we are finally seeing some good flowering now which should last till the middle of September at least.

In the nursery we have started our exhaustive hand pollination of our stock plants in the hope of plenty of seed to sow later in the year. And we have lots of newly germinated seedlings coming up from last years crop which we are about to pot into tubes ready for next year.

In the garden it is not too late to remove any old or messy foliage from your Hellebores and give them some fertiliser. And make sure there is not too much mulch/fallen leaves smothering the plants as they appreciate a some space, light and air movement at this time of year.

The Nursery is open every Sunday now through till the end of September. As a production Nursery we are not usually open, so this is a rare chance to see how we propagate and grow our Hellebores. You can also view an unmatched range of Hellebores available for sale (both tubestock and flowering sized plants). Well worth a visit over the next six weeks or so to get the full peak season Hellebore experience.

You can get directions and other information about our Open Sundays here:

Details about our Open Sundays

For those who can’t make it to the Nursery we are still posting out Hellebores to all States except WA. Winter is an ideal time to plant Hellebores, so if you need a few more Hellebores for the garden have a look at the selection here:

Visit the Online Hellebore Store

Starting from this Sunday June 5th, Post Office Farm Nursery will be open to the public again this year. We will be open to visitors every Sunday from June till the end of September.

We look forward to welcoming visitors to the Nursery over Winter. Our sales area is undercover and we are about an hour’s drive from most parts of Melbourne.

You can get directions and other information about our Open Sundays here:

Details about our Open Sundays

For those who can’t make it to the Nursery we are still posting out Hellebores to all States except WA. Winter is an ideal time to plant Hellebores and we still have most varieties still available, so if you need a few more Hellebores for the garden have a look at the selection here:

Visit the Online Hellebore Store

If you have not done so already, now is the ideal time to remove the old foliage on established Hellebores and give them a feed.

We are pleased to announce that our website Hellebore Shop is now open for this season.

This year the Shop features 54 different Hellebore varieties, including a number being offered for the first time. The weather has been very mild for us over the past few months and the Hellebores are looking in excellent condition. Autumn is an ideal time to plant Hellebores.

Please be patient when ordering as we usually have a rush of orders early on which can take us a while to catch up with. Expect a delay of about 2-3 weeks between ordering and getting your plants. We have a new ‘How we do things’ page which explains everything you need to know about how the mail-out of our plants work, so if you have not ordered before, do have a look at that.

VISIT OUR HELLEBORE STORE HERE

PLANT FAIR NEWS

For the first time since 2019 we will be attending some wonderful Plant Fairs over the next few weeks and we are really looking forward to getting out and about again.

Firstly in Melbourne we will be at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show from March 30 to April 3. Then in NSW we will be at the Collectors Plant Fair at the Hawkesbury Race Club in Clarendon on April 9 and 10. A couple of weeks later we will be at the Southern Highlands Botanic Garden Plant Fair in Bowral, NSW on April 23 and 24.

MORE INFORMATION ON THESE PLANT FAIRS HERE

While there was lots of damage in the Macedon Ranges caused by the severe storm event of earlier this month we were very fortunate that the Nursery escaped any real damage. All the local roads are open again so it is all good to visit the area now.

We are enjoying another earlyish Hellebore flowering season this year. As a result we have a lots of flowering sized plants available in the Nursery at the moment and probably through to the end of August at least. This means we have started spending time in the stockhouse with hand pollinating, something we all look forward to each year.

The Nursery is open every Sunday through till the end of September. As a production Nursery we are not usually open, so this is a rare chance to see how we propagate and grow our Hellebores. You can also view an unmatched range of Hellebores available for sale. Well worth a visit over the next six to eight weeks to get the full peak season Hellebore experience.

Details about our Open Sundays

For those who can’t make it to the Nursery we are still posting out Hellebores to all States except WA. Most varieties are still available, but things are selling fast so don’t hold off too long. Winter is an ideal time to plant Hellebores, so if you need a few more Hellebores for the garden have a look at the selection here:

Visit the Online Hellebore Store

Starting from Sunday June 6th, Post Office Farm Nursery will be open to the public again this year. We will be open to visitors every Sunday from June till the end of September.

We look forward to welcoming visitors to the Nursery over Winter, this is especially so after last year when those from greater Melbourne were unable to visit for most of the season.

We will have the usual huge range of smaller one year old seedlings in 75mm tubes available for sale. This year flowering looks to be running to its usual timetable, so we will have few if any have larger flowering sized Hellebores available until at least July.

You can get directions and other information about our Open Sundays here:

Details about our Open Sundays

Visit the Online Hellebore Store

If you have not done so already, now is the ideal time to remove the old foliage on established Hellebores and give them a feed.

We are very pleased to announce that our website Hellebore Shop is now open for business.

As with last year, we will not be attending any of our usual Plant Fairs this Autumn so for the moment ordering online is the only way to get our Hellebores. The past few months have been quite mild weather wise and the Hellebores are looking as good as they ever have.

We have a wonderful selection of Hellebores available this year, 49 varieties in total, a new record. One variety in particular I would like to mention is the Experimental Crosses which this year are exclusively the offspring from the Hellebores we imported from Japan in 2018. Very exciting.

Please be aware that there may be some delays in us getting orders out to you, at least in the next few weeks. Easter is coming up which always disrupts our dispatch process and we are expecting lots of orders early on. Last year we added an extra mailout day to help clear the backlog, but we are a small operation and there is only so much we can do. So please be patient and expect delays of around 3 weeks till we can dispatch your order. The good news is that Australia Post delivery times seem almost back to normal at the moment, which was not the case at times last year.

Thank you for your support and happy gardening.

Click here to visit our Hellebore Shop

Our Hellebore shop has reopened after a couple of weeks off.

We were having a few issues with Australia Post delays and keeping up with orders generally, but we think we have things sorted now. We will be posting all Victorian orders via Express Post to expedite delivery. Interstate orders have not been as affected by Australia Post delays so we will continue to send via normal parcel post. We are finding about 80% of orders getting to their destinations within one week.

Your understanding of the challenges in running a mail based live plant business during the current difficulties is appreciated. Plants may be in the post a bit longer than ideal but we find that beyond a few superficial marks, Hellebores are tough plants and will in the longer term grow right through such issues.

Please note also that stocks of quite a few of the varieties we have currently listed in the shop are limited and may not last long. We expect that we will only be taking orders until the end of September.

We have enjoyed a wonderful flowering season here in the Nursery. We are still hand pollinating our stock plants and tubing up the varieties which we will be selling next year.

The joy and satisfaction of plants and gardening have only been heightened by the unique circumstances that we have all found ourselves in during 2020. We hope that your garden is thriving and would again like to thank all for their support over the past season and hope for a better one next year.

Click here to go to our Shop.

Open Sundays

The next three Sundays will be our final Open Days at Post Office Farm for this year. Last chance for the year to see the Nursery and we still have some flowering Hellebores available. For more information on our Open Sundays see here.

A lovely composition of Hellebore flowers taken by Simon Griffiths at Post Office Farm.

Starting this Sunday June 7th, we will be opening the Nursery to the public. We will be open to visitors every Sunday from June till the end of September.

After a challenging start to our Hellebore season with the cancellation of the three major Plant Fairs we usually attend in March and April, we have been encouraged by a very positive response to our Online Hellebore Store. With the easing of COVID-19 restrictions from June 1 allowing regional travel, we are looking forward to catching up with customers again over Winter (at an appropriate social distance of course).

We will have the usual huge range of Hellebores available for sale. This year flowering is about a month earlier than usual, so we will have larger flowering sized Hellebores available from our first Open Sunday as well as smaller tubestock varieties.

Please note that we will not be presenting our usual Nursery Tours/Talks on our Open Sundays to meet current social distancing requirements. However we are happy to answer all of your questions about our Hellebores or to assist you with growing them.

You can get directions and other information about our Open Sundays here:

Details about our Open Sundays

Visit the Online Hellebore Store

We are very pleased to announce that our website’s Hellebore Shop is now open for business.

We don’t need to tell anyone that it has been a challenging start to our Hellebore season. All of our much loved Autumn Plant Fairs have been cancelled, for reasons we fully understand, so we missed catching up with lots of our ‘regulars’. Of course the same conditions are affecting other small Nurseries and businesses at the moment, but life must go on.

For those that missed out on picking up a few Hellebores at the cancelled Plant Fairs, and for those planning some extra garden time in the next little while….never fear Australia Post is here!

One silver lining from current events is that we have several varieties that were going to be Plant Fair exclusives which we have added to the website shop. So we have no less than 48 varieties listed, a new record. And we have to say the plants are looking really, really nice at the moment.

Thank you for your support and please take care.

Click here to visit our Hellebore Shop

We hope you have enjoyed a good flowering season with Hellebores in your garden. Thanks again to all those who have ordered from us this year and visited the Nursery over Winter. In the Nursery now we are nearly finished tubing up the newly germinated seedlings which will be next year’s crop. We have finished hand pollinating thousands of flowers in the stock house and have spent several days placing our custom bags over all of the pollinated flowers to collect the seed.

In the garden now is the time to remove spent flowering stems, apply some mulch around the Hellebores and keep an eye out for aphids. Assuming the usual dry conditions apply over Summer make sure any new Hellebores you have planted this year get water as required.

Crookwell Garden Festival

Our very last event this season will be to attend the Crookwell Garden Festival in November. We hope to see Hellebore lovers from Crookwell and surrounding areas. We have put aside a few nice Hellebores for this market. The wonderful ‘Garden Lovers Market’ is held on Saturday 9th November as part of the Crookwell Garden festival. The Garden Lovers Market is held at the Crookwell Showgrounds. More information here.

Online Hellebore Shop closing

Last call for any Hellebore orders for this year. We are getting very low in stocks of Hellebores so the website Shop will be closing at 6pm this Friday October 18th.

To see which varieties are still available click here.

We are getting towards the end of a very good flowering season for the Hellebores here in Ashbourne. All of our hand pollinating is finished for this year and we will soon start to place our special seed collection bags over all pollinated flowers before the seed ripens. Otherwise we are busy tubing up all of this years Helleborus seedlings so we have good stock for next year.

Spring Plant fairs

We will be attending three Plant Fairs over the next month or so.

Firstly, on the weekend of 5th and 6th of October we will be at the Garden Lover’s Fair at Bolobek in Macedon, see this website for details.

The weekend of 12th and 13th of October will see us at the Gippsland Garden Expo at Lardner Park, near Warragul. See this website for details.

Finally on Saturday 9th of November we will be attending the Crookwell Garden Lovers Market held at the Crookwell Showgrounds in NSW. More information here.

Open Sundays

This coming Sunday (September 29th) will be our final Open Day at Post Office Farm for this year. Last chance for the year to see the Nursery and we still have some flowering Hellebores available. For more information on our Open Sundays see here.

Hellebores by mail

Our online Hellebore Shop is still open. However we are getting lowish in stock for several varieties and may be closing the Shop a bit earlier than the usual end of October this year. If you still need a few Hellebores, I would recommend ordering in the next couple of weeks to avoid missing out.