my gardens: A trip to Pine Knot Farms

A clump of hellebores in the Tylers' home garden

Multicolored hellebore blooms, effortless living art,
float the day away in the Tyler garden

Pine Knot Farms is a family-run nursery in southern Virginia -- literally 3 or so miles from the North Carolina state line. They propagate a wide variety of hellebores and their companion plants. On Friday, March 6th, I made my annual trip up for their Hellebore Festival Days, which usually occur on the last weekend of February and first weekend of March.

Wisteria frutescens 'Amethyst Falls' in winter form,
espaliered to shop wall at Pine Knot Farms

One of my favorite places, the sales nursery, loaded with tempting plants

I go to Pine Knot each year to buy plants for my garden, yes. But the true highlights of my visit are seeing Dick and Judith Knott Tyler's own wonderful garden surrounding their home (home and nursery are right next door to each other), checking out the Wisteria frutescens 'Amethyst Falls' that has been espaliered to a wall outside their shop (its leafless winter form is wonderfully curving and intertwined), and seeing all the different hellebore bloom colors in their big greenhouse.

I came home with a small host of new hellebores, a special cyclamen (I've been planning to try and start a colony of these beautiful dainty plants with wing-like flowers, variegated leaves and gently curving stems), some snowdrops, a couple of miniature daffodils with grasslike leaves, and an Edgeworthia (a gift for my sister, Bobbie).

I have my work cut out for me!