Visit to Post Office Farm Nursery, Hellebore growers and hybridizers.

Earlier today I braved the cold Macedon Ranges winter environment to visit Post Office Farm Nursery which is a Hellebore grower and hybridizer located outside Woodend not far from my home. In my opinion Post Office Farm produces the best Hellebore hybrids in Australia and being a wholesale supplier the nursery is only open to the public during certain times of the year. It was great to see what this sort of production environment looked like on the inside and it was surprisingly not as mechanized as I thought it may have been. All processed apart from watering looked to be done by hand in contrast to the plug growers I have heard about which have robotics most of the duties. The selection of hellebores on offer was amazing and I strongly suggest you visit yourself if you have the inclination to do so (links to the website are below). If you like the Hellebores they produce you can also find their hellebores labelled as 'Winter Elegance'. In retail nurseries. I will write a blog entry with more info about hellebores and also growing / care instructions in the near future.



Links

Post Office Farm Nursery
http://www.postofficefarmnursery.com.au/

Winter Elegance range of hellebores
http://www.helleborus.com.au/series.html

Peter Leigh (owner and manager of Post Office Farm) giving a talk about hybridizing. He gives tours on Sundays and provides lots of information about growing and caring for these sensitive plants. Notice the black coloured Hellebores at his feet.

So many plants. I think these ones were about 12 months old.

More advanced plants. The price is significantly higher for a more established plant such as these.

Below are the pots which contain sown seed from the hybrid plants. They looked to be growing in a very rocky growing medium. From here they are pricked out by hand and transplanted into tubes.

The plants pictured below are Peter Leigh's collection of Hellebore sp. plants he has grown from seed sent from overseas. Some are used to create hybrids for sale. Others are just collection plants.

This is where the magic happens. It is the shade house where the stock plants are hand pollinated to create hybrid seed which grow into the plants they sell. What you see below is only an eighth of the total amount of stock plants that were in this area. 

These last shots are of several of the flowers on the stock plants. I could have photographed all day as there were so many plants.