Whether you say ca-mee-lia or ca-mell-ia, camellias have been so long associated with Southern gardens that you might think they’re natives. The camellia even has been selected as the state flower of Alabama, but like many of our other garden plants, they’re native to eastern and southern Asia.
The earliest plant explorers were probably trying to get their hands on Camellia sinensis, the plant from which tea is made. The story is told that the Chinese substituted more showy flowering camellias to keep the tea trade for themselves. The beauty of the camellia blossom certainly made the plants worth keeping.
Carole Simpson, owner of Ashe-Simpson Garden Center in Chamblee, remembers her first encounter with camellias in the garden. Thirty years ago she and her husband, Bill, bought a home in Brookhaven on a long, deep property. “I’ll never forget. It was the end of November or early December and I saw something pink way down at the end of the lot. I walked down and there was a ‘Debutante’ blooming. I picked all of the flowers and brought them in and thought, ‘I want more’,” Simpson said.
Almost 20 years later, Simpson started Ashe-Simpson Garden Center, where you’ll find close to 100 varieties for sale. “They’re tough, durable plants, the perfect choice for our gardens, a good background shrub for perennials or borders with a variety of heights, widths, bloom times and colors,” she said.
Eight months of color
“By choosing the right varieties, you can have camellias in bloom in your garden from early September into April. That’s eight months of the year,” said Tommy Alden of County Line, a specialty nursery in Byron.
Start your camellia season with Camellia sasanqua, in bloom from September until January. The blossoms are usually 1 1/2 to 4 inches wide, and range in color from white to red. Most flowers are single or semidouble. Because of their small leaves, sasanquas will tolerate more sun than their larger-leafed japonica cousins.
Camellia japonica is probably the most familiar type of camellia with large, showy flowers that begin blooming in December and continue until April. Growers have bred thousands of japonica cultivars with blooms ranging from white to almost black red and variegated varieties that have striped and spotted petals. Some varieties can grow to be small trees as tall as 12 feet.
Widely available cultivars like ‘Taylor’s Perfection’ and ‘Yuletide’ are Camellia x vernalis, a cross between sasanquas and japonicas. And the huge, showy blossoms you see at camellia shows generally come from Camellia reticulata, which aren’t hardy in the Atlanta area and have to be grown in greenhouses.
Easy care
All camellias thrive in light shade. The ideal site for a camellia garden is under a grove of pine trees. The high canopy offers diffuse light, and the slightly acidic soil is just what a camellia craves.
Camellias should be planted about 2 to 3 inches higher than the surrounding soil. “It takes about 2 years for a plant to root in, and as they do, their roots spread out and the plant sinks. If you’ve planted them at ground level, they’ll end up too low and they won’t be happy,” Simpson said. Those shallow roots mean it’s not that difficult to move a large camellia if you’ve ended up with one that’s outgrown its spot.
The most common problems for camellias are dieback and scale.
Dieback is a disease caused by a fungus that splashes up on the plants from the soil. It causes the plant to die a piece at a time until the whole shrub is gone.
Once a plant gets dieback, it’s pretty much done for, but a 2- to 3-inch thick layer of mulch will help prevent the problem.
Yellow splotches on the upper leaves and cottony white stuff on the underside mean scale insects have descended. The best time to treat for them is in early summer when the insects are in their crawler stage.
Simpson recommends treating the plants organically, spraying them with ultra fine oil, which smothers the scale insects and kills them on contact.
Because scale insects hide on the underside of leaves, it’s important to spray all leaf surfaces.
Grow more
Camellias also may be the queen of pass-along plants. The camellias that first attracted Simpson were planted by her home’s former owner who grew them from cuttings taken from his mother’s extensive collection in Druid Hills. Attend a meeting of your local camellia society and the members will tell you all about ways to propagate the plants and probably give you a cutting or two to start with.
Learn more
The American Camellia Society makes its home just 90 minutes south of Atlanta in Fort Valley.
More than 1,000 varieties of camellias are on display in the 100-acre botanical garden there, and camellia plants are available in the retail shop.
Bloom starts in September and continues until April. A trip there during the peak display time of February and March is well worth the drive.
On the Web site, you'll find a list of the camellia societies and clubs in Georgia, at the American Camellia Society.
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