Camellias in the Garden: January 2 2022

I made a special trip to the Botanic Garden to see if the Camellias were in bloom and the very earliest one, Camellia japonica, was just starting to open. All around are other varieties, reds and pinks and whites, their fat buds close to bursting open.

They have lovely glossy evergreen leaves, the perfect foil for the bright colours of the flowers and, although not native to the British Isles, do very well in our cool, damp climate. They need an acidic soil (ours tends to be neutral to alkaline) and a sheltered site facing away from the early morning sun, as they can be damaged by cold dry winds and morning frosts.

Camellias can grow quite large, in the Garden they form sprawling branching shrubs extending two or more metres in height and several metres wide, merging into each other. They take ten to twenty years to reach their full height, and benefit from being low maintenance. They do well in containers, a plus for our smaller English gardens.

I was thinking about one for the back garden, perhaps along the back boundary where it would make a lovely display in spring and cover an otherwise uninspiring wooden fence. There is plenty of room for a spreading plant and it would be protected from the early morning sun. All my neighbours would enjoy it to as they walked past, too. Or maybe a shrub in a container? Let's see.

Also putting in an appearance was this: a Viburnum, I think, also a lovely glossy evergreen and some varieties have a wonderful scent (this one didn't seem to, though). It seems they flower all through the winter, followed by black berries, generally very hardy, but again, prefer to be sheltered from early morning sun.

Both can be propagated by semi-hardwood cuttings. I had an elderly aunt who was not averse to swiping the end of a twiggy branch, complete with a "heel" of bark and plenty of leaves. She kept a small polythene bag in her shopping bag for the purpose, although not quite cheeky enough to carry a pruning knife as well, along with another polythene bag containing a damp flannel for wiping sticky hands and faces (infinitely preferable to the spit and hanky method).

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