Practical camellia care from two decades in the garden
Helen Pritchard Helen Pritchard · April 25, 2026
I’m Helen Pritchard, and after two decades of growing camellias in the Pacific Northwest, I can tell you that my garden is home to over 200 named pink cultivars. I’ve planted, relocated, occasionally killed, and fallen head over heels for countless varieties. Last October, as the fog lifted off my back border, I paused mid-step … Read more
Helen Pritchard · April 22, 2026
Wondering whether a camellia can genuinely thrive shut inside a pot instead of planted in open ground? Here’s my honest answer: yes, and convincingly so — I’ve been doing it for years. A few seasons back, running out of room in my crowded Zone 8a garden, I wedged a dwarf camellia variety into a hefty … Read more
Helen Pritchard · April 20, 2026
Back in the mid-2000s, I put a single ‘Kramers Supreme’ in the ground along a bare fence line, convinced it would somehow bulk up into a screen all on its own within a couple of seasons. It didn’t — not remotely, not without company, not without real planning. That gap in the fence stayed embarrassingly … Read more
Helen Pritchard · April 17, 2026
Ask a nursery employee about white flowers in a shade bed and you’ll often hear one of two things: either “white just disappears in a dim corner, go bold instead,” or “white is hands-down the best color for shady spots.” The first piece of advice is flat wrong, and I can prove it every February. … Read more
Helen Pritchard · April 15, 2026
A stretch of unseasonably mild, rain-soaked days settled over my zone in late January roughly fifteen years back, the kind of weather that pulls you outside even when you’d normally be indoors waiting out winter. It was on one of those damp, warm walks that I stopped mid-step beside a Camellia lutchuensis hybrid, caught off … Read more
Helen Pritchard · April 13, 2026
Nursery tags will tell you “full sun to part shade,” maybe a hardiness zone number, and little else. What they won’t tell you is that Camellia sasanqua and Camellia japonica lose their flowers to cold in two completely different ways, at two completely different times of year — and that gap is exactly what my … Read more
Helen Pritchard · April 10, 2026
The day I finally noticed it, ‘Ville de Nantes’ had maybe four buds left on the whole shrub, and its lower leaves had gone that dull yellow-green that tells you a camellia is struggling, not resting. That was the moment I stopped trusting glossy nursery photos and started paying attention to what a red camellia … Read more
Helen Pritchard · April 8, 2026
Nearly every new camellia grower carries the same assumption into their first purchase: that these plants are temperamental, finicky things reserved for people with decades of experience. It’s wrong, and I can say so with some authority — I killed two of them myself before I understood what they actually wanted. Bad drainage, the wrong … Read more
Helen Pritchard · April 5, 2026
There’s a wooden potting bench tucked against the fence line on the east side of my property, and most Novembers you’ll find me hunched over it, thumbnail working into a fat, leathery seedpod I’ve just pulled from my Camellia japonica ‘Adolphe Audusson’. Three dark seeds rolled into my palm the last time I did this, … Read more
Helen Pritchard · April 3, 2026
Clay soil will kill your camellias if you plant into it blind. That’s not scare tactics — it’s what nearly happened to my ‘Professor Charles S. Sargent,’ a deep crimson double japonica I’d chased down for years before finally planting it, only to watch it languish in a soggy bed for two miserable seasons. Eventually, … Read more