plant-propagation

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

Twenty-two years ago, fresh into growing camellias and far too confident for my own good, I snipped a piece of ‘Nuccio’s Gem’ — a formal double japonica I’d only just brought home — and dropped it straight into a jar of water on the kitchen sill, fully expecting roots within days, the way pothos or … Read more