hello there it's Mike the gardener it's a beautiful day in late autumn and I'm having a stroll around the garden to look at the leaves of my hellebores in particular hellebores are a fantastic addition to the garden and the flowers in late winter and early spring are wonderful but at this time of year it's a good time to check the foliage and cut the old foliage back so come on I'll show you what we need to do hellebores are largely trouble-free the only thing they can be prone to is black spot of the leaves now if you read the books this is a job they're usually described as being done in late winter and early spring however I think late winter how many people are likely to be in the garden spring is when they start to come into flower so I like to get an error tad early and get them cut up now and for me that pays off extremely well so I'll show you what you need to do so here is the hellebore I'm going to cut back and this is the old foliage on the top here now this hasn't been troubled by blank spot but I put that down to the point that I keep on top of this each and every autumn cutting back the old foliage and if you look down at the base of the plant you can just see underneath there at the beginnings of the new foliage and flowers coming up there so I'm going to cut back all of these old stems to just above the base there to expose the new buds and the new foliage okay so I'm just going in and cutting down the hellebore leaves pretty much to the base but just being careful to watch out for any growth underneath so I'm taking it down to put it to about five centimetres cut that all off and because it may actually be prone to black spot don't compost this pop it in the bin or burn it as always if you have any questions about this or any aspect of gardening give me a shout through Garden tags I make the gardener see you next time bye bye