Practical camellia care from two decades in the garden
Helen Pritchard · June 24, 2026
A soggy stretch we had this past March — nearly ten straight days of rain here in zone 8a — left my japonica beds littered with collapsed, mud-brown blooms, and it drove home the question readers send me more than any other: is deadheading camellias actually necessary? On the surface it seems trivial. Snap off … Read more
Helen Pritchard · June 19, 2026
I still remember crouching in front of a ‘Debutante’ one November afternoon, counting its flower buds — eleven, maybe twelve, scattered thinly along stems that should have carried three times that number after a good rainy summer. That meager count told me everything I needed to know: somewhere the previous year, a badly timed cut … Read more
Helen Pritchard · March 10, 2026
Why would anyone go through the trouble of grafting a camellia instead of just rooting a cutting? Here’s the honest answer: because some plants simply won’t give you a choice. I hit that exact wall years ago, standing over a leggy, root-knot-nematode-riddled Camellia japonica ‘Nuccio’s Gem’ that I refused to let die. Its blooms were … Read more
Helen Pritchard · March 5, 2026
Back around 2003 or so, I very nearly killed a cutting of ‘Nuccio’s Gem’ — still one of my favorite white japonicas to this day — simply because patience wasn’t my strong suit yet. I yanked it from the propagation tray too soon, absolutely certain it had rooted, and in doing so tore off every … Read more
Helen Pritchard · February 19, 2026
My knees started sending serious complaints about three years ago. I grow camellias in Zone 8b, and pruning season means long stretches of kneeling on hard clay soil. Between my Kramer’s Supreme’ Japonicas along the back fence and the sprawling…
Helen Pritchard · February 7, 2026
Last February, I stood in front of my oldest Kramer’s Supreme’ Japonica and felt genuinely embarrassed. Twenty-three years I have been growing camellias in my Zone 8b garden, and somehow I had let that poor shrub turn into a tangled,…
Helen Pritchard · January 24, 2026
My camellia hedge has been the pride of my backyard for nearly two decades. However, somewhere around year fifteen, it stopped being manageable and started being a problem. What began as a tidy row of Camellia japonica Kramer’s Supreme’ had…
Helen Pritchard · December 12, 2025
Walk with me to the far side of my shade house, past the potting bench and the stack of nursery flats I keep meaning to sort, and you’ll find a row of camellia stems wrapped in plastic like little science experiments — the current batch of air layers I’m nursing along beside a tray of … Read more
Helen Pritchard · November 30, 2025
“Why is my pieris turning yellow when it’s sitting right next to a camellia that looks fantastic?” a woman at a regional plant swap asked me, holding up a phone photo of a sickly-looking shrub. Camellias hold that queenly status in the cool-season garden — glossy foliage, blooms shaped like small roses, elegance while everything … Read more