Pruning the Hellebores

Pruning the Hellebores
Volunteering in the Arboretum every Tuesday afternoon is the best of all worlds. The job consists of purely physical outdoor labor. (How many of us get to do that these days?) Although some people might prefer wilder, less domesticated flora, I like this urban oasis of trees and plants. I’m surrounded by a carefully selected nature where everything is tagged, categorized and nurtured, except, of course, the weeds. That’s our weekly job as volunteers, pulling weeds: “Stinky Bob”, buttercup, horsetail, morning glory and the ever present, ever aggressive blackberry vines. We’ve become intimately acquainted with all of them.
But once in a while we get a treat, something different from the pulling, the bending and the digging of stubborn vines and roots clinging to the terrain around giant sequoia and huge hybrid rhododendron bushes. For example, last week our assignment was to prune the Hellebores, the flowering plants that return every January. Forget the weeders, pitch forks, and trowels. All we needed that day was a pruner.
Karen and Ryan, the Arboretum employees, drove the Gators (utility vehicles) carrying the rakes, tarps, buckets and pruners to the Winter Garden. We three volunteers, Leo, Ben and I walked the short distance towards the Hellebores.
Although Leo and I are old enough to be Ben’s or Ryan’s parents, we feel comfortable working beside them in this setting. Ryan doesn’t talk much, but I know he likes his job. He always finds a special bug, mushroom or leaf to marvel over. He’s never to busy to show us a new sight, the autumn leaves of the Chilean Fire tree or the changing color of the heather in the winter. Ben and I talk about films and jobs, books and travel. As we compare our preferences, I know some of our differences are generational.
Karen is a mom with a bright teenage son. She’s a good mom, I can tell, because he checks in on her cell phone when he gets home from school. And though she keeps us on task, she and I find time to talk about books, her son, the GIS class she’s taking, or just life. In one of her previous jobs she had worked as a landscaper for a company with wealthy clients.
“Every job had its special finishing touches. Raking the gravel was an important part; we had to make patterns with the rake’s teeth.”
Like Ryan she always takes the time to marvel over some growing thing. Sometimes she even collects discarded trimmings for a basket, centerpiece, or tinder for her tiny fireplace at home.
We were the only visitors on the path to the Winter Garden that day.
“Wow, look at that yellow! Is that the Mahonia?” I said pointing to a bushy plant to our right. I’m still awed by these plants that bloom in the December or January.
Next to the Mahonia were two Witch-Hazel trees, the sun backlighting the blossoms. I had never thought Witch-Hazel was a particularly handsome tree. It’s kind of gnarly looking, even in the winter when it blooms. It’s the intoxicating, aromatic scent that had impressed me when I first saw it the previous year. But that day as the sun’s rays highlighted the yellow and rust of the little petals, the trees took on a magical aspect. Watercolors and oils and pastels mixed up by some impressionistic painter dotted the branches.
After stealing a few whiffs from the Witch-Hazel I saw that Ryan and Ben had staked out their sections among the Hellebores and had begun clipping and snipping at the dark green leaves. I bent down to the ground with my pruner, looking for the stems of the large multi-leaved growth. “Do we prune all of the leaves like we did last year?” I asked Karen, eyeing a few of the fragile green and lavender flower petals.
Last year I had worried that we were taking away their protection from the wind and frosty air. I thought the tiny flowers looked naked rising from the cold crusty ground. But I discovered that Hellebores are as tough as Midwestern crocus that push up through a Missouri snow. The following week their hardy stems had stretched to push the flowers through the decaying elm leaves. Standing taller, and surrounded by new, smaller leaves the bell-shaped flowers hung their heads as if embarrassed by their strength. The cold weather flower had been given the space to grow and seek sunlight.
It was one the few times as a volunteer I could see a difference. To be honest, sometimes it feels like we’re fighting a losing battle against the weeds. The job we do on Tuesday can look undone by the following week. Pull one horsetail and another one is waiting under a leaf to take its place. And just because we’ve pulled up a bowl-full of spaghetti-stringed morning glory root doesn’t mean it’s been conquered. For every three feet of root there’s another ten winding through the bushes and vines.
Last week, though, as we stood up to survey the results of our efforts, we were all smiling. It was quitting time and the last leaf had been pruned. The Hellebore bed had a fresher, sleeker veneer. I turned to Karen to tell her how great everything looked. She was raking the path, making little grooved patterns in the gravel.