Practical camellia care from two decades in the garden
Helen Pritchard Helen Pritchard · January 19, 2026
Last spring, I hit a wall I hadn’t expected after two decades of growing camellias. My raised beds — which I’d built specifically for acid-loving plants — started showing signs of pH drift. Leaves on my Kanjiro’ Sasanqua turned a…
Helen Pritchard · January 16, 2026
In the spring of my ninth year growing camellias, I walked out to my largest bed and found three established plants sitting in standing water that had been there for at least four days. Two of them were Survivor’ japonicas…
Helen Pritchard · January 14, 2026
When I planted my first camellia back in 2003, I had no idea what I was doing. I bought a generic, unlabeled plant from a big-box nursery, stuck it in full sun with clay soil, and watched it slowly sulk…
Helen Pritchard · January 12, 2026
I still remember the spring I lost a twelve-year-old Survivor’ camellia to what I can only describe as fertilizer enthusiasm. It was my fourth season growing camellias seriously, and I pushed nitrogen too early, right before a late frost snapped…
Helen Pritchard · January 9, 2026
Three springs ago, I stood in front of a Survivor’ camellia I had planted seven years earlier and felt genuinely defeated. The leaves had gone from that deep, waxy green I love to a sickly yellow-green with darker veins running…
Helen Pritchard · January 7, 2026
Three years. Three springs of walking past that April Kiss’ camellia in my side garden, watching it push out healthy dark green leaves while producing exactly zero flowers. I fertilized it. I watered it. I talked to it — yes,…
Helen Pritchard · January 4, 2026
I still remember standing in the garden that March morning, coffee going cold in my hand, staring at my twelve-year-old camellia like I’d just watched a car crash in slow motion. She’d been loaded with fat pink buds. A hard…
Helen Pritchard · December 31, 2025
It was a Tuesday in January when my neighbor Linda showed up at my door holding her phone out like it was evidence at a crime scene. On the screen: a photo of her camellia, leaves slightly curled, a few…
Helen Pritchard · December 28, 2025
It was the third week of January, and I was standing in my garden at 6 a.m. in my dressing gown, watching a hard frost settle over my camellias like a slow disaster. One of them — a Jury’s Yellow’…
Helen Pritchard · December 26, 2025
I still remember standing in my backyard on a January morning, staring at my beloved Kramer’s Supreme’ camellia, its buds turned to brown mush overnight. My neighbor Patty had told me back in October not to worry — “camellias are…