Practical camellia care from two decades in the garden
Helen Pritchard · May 23, 2026
Hi there! I’m Helen Pritchard, and I’ve spent over two decades nurturing camellias in my garden here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. With more than 200 named cultivars under my belt, including favorites like ‘Donation’, ‘Brushfield’s Yellow’, and ‘Nicky Crisp’, I’ve learned a thing or two about what makes these stunning plants tick. Growing camellias … Read more
Helen Pritchard · May 21, 2026
A late-February hard freeze dipped into the low twenties here in my zone 8a garden a few years back, and it pushed me to dig up and relocate a ten-year-old Camellia japonica ‘Elegans’ that had been sitting in a spot suddenly too exposed to the wind. Sliding the root ball free of its planting hole, … Read more
Helen Pritchard · May 19, 2026
No plastic tag wedged into a nursery pot will ever warn you about this: cottony white tufts creeping along your camellia’s stems aren’t lint, mould, or garden debris—they’re eggs, and by the time you notice them, they’ve often already spread. I found this out the hard way on my treasured ‘Donation’ shrub after more than … Read more
Helen Pritchard · May 16, 2026
I’m Helen Pritchard, and I’ve spent over two decades cultivating camellias in the lush, temperate climate of the Pacific Northwest. My journey has led me through the intricacies of more than 200 named cultivars, from the delicate sasanquas to the robust japonicas and stunning reticulatas. I’ve had my fair share of successes and, believe me, … Read more
Helen Pritchard · May 14, 2026
Nearly every camellia grower I’ve ever swapped notes with operates on the same unspoken assumption: the ground beneath a mature shrub is simply lost real estate, destined to stay bare or scraggly no matter what you throw at it. I believed that too for years, standing under my oldest camellia—a towering ‘Donation’ japonica that had … 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
Helen Pritchard · March 25, 2026
“Can anything actually bloom under that much shade, or am I basically planting fancy ground cover?” A fellow gardener asked me that while staring down a gloomy, root-tangled patch beneath his backyard oaks, and the question stuck with me because I’d stood in that exact spot myself roughly fifteen years earlier. My own oak grove … Read more
Helen Pritchard · March 22, 2026
I’m running my thumb along the rim of a terracotta pot right now, checking for the hairline crack that nearly cost me a plant I loved. That pot held ‘Nuccio’s Gem,’ a formal double white Japonica I’d babied for six years. A brutal freeze slipped past a thin layer of fleece, the drainage underneath was … Read more
Helen Pritchard · December 2, 2025
Introduction: Why Your Winter Garden Needs the Pink-a-Boo Camellia Scroll back through my phone to late December, and you’ll land on a photo of my side yard: frost-silvered lawn, skeletal hydrangeas, and one shrub absolutely dripping in soft pink flowers. That single image sums up the whole argument for growing this plant. Most of the … Read more