It’s sprinter—that wonderful season between winter and spring—and the hellebores (a.k.a. Lenten roses) are in bloom!

These beloved shade garden stalwarts have undergone a revolution in recent years. Formerly limited to a very narrow color palette, hellebores now soothe our flower-starved late winter eyes with white, pink, violet, crimson, green, lavender, peach, primrose, and purple-black tones.

I hit a few garden centers in Portland this week to see what was available in this hot genus, and here’s what I found…

Helleborus Golden Sunrise is a plant I’ve coveted in others’ gardens, so I grabbed one when I saw it at Xera Plants. Golden Sunrise is part of the “Winter Jewels” collection hybridized by Ernie and Marietta O’Byrne of Northwest Garden Nursery in Eugene, Oregon.