Helen Ballard

“ A queen among plants people, she will be remembered for years to come for the great gift she gave to the gardening world, the words Helen Ballard and hellebore are synonymous.”

Of all the people who have changed the direction in which the nursery has travelled in its 15-year history, Mrs. Helen Ballard has to be among the most influential, even though our paths as individuals have never crossed. Her collection of hellebores reputed to be the best in the world, and certainly world renowned, had such a lasting effect on almost all at Farmyard Nurseries that we were hooked and a large percentage of resources and room were put into gear to carry on the work that took over the latter part of her life.

Mrs. Ballard came to the hellebore scene late in life, starting her collection with only four plants, two reds and two whites. She planted them in a shady cold border on a farm at Malvern where they thrived and when their first crop of flowers thrust their way through the ground in the depths of winter she was hooked!

From those four were then borne the famous Ballard strain of hybrid orientalis type Hellebores. Her overriding aims were twofold, only the strongest most healthy specimens were involved in the breeding program and the plants were selected for large outward facing flowers, a very difficult trait to stabilise. Hybridisation was always carried out with as large a gene pool as possible to ensure that the vigour was maintained and self-pollination was never considered. New colours were gradually introduced by using collected species from various corners of Europe, yellow from H. odorous, darker purples and blacks from H. torquatus, the slate greys and purples from H .purpurascens and of course a combination of these and others.

As well as hybridising the orientalis types she also did a lot of work with the Christmas Rose, H. niger, producing a very large flowered strain and also an assortment of crosses with H. lividus and H. argutifolius and the resulting seedlings.

At the time of her death she had produced hellebores with no match anywhere in the world in a superb colour range in almost every shade imaginable, all subtle colours together. Her ‘North Border’ the place where it all started 30 years or more earlier was, and hopefully still is a sight that has to be seen to be believed.

Two colours that eluded Mrs. Ballard are still, several years after her death, not really available- the true apricot (although it is very close now, a difficult colour to really define), and the blues which are almost there with the blue sheens seen on the slate greys.

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