Practical camellia care from two decades in the garden
Helen Pritchard · July 24, 2026
Kneeling beside a client’s newly installed 2-gallon nursery plant last week, I got the question again—the one I field constantly: “When does this thing actually turn into a real shrub?” She’d just tucked her sasanqua into the ground and was already eyeing the bare patch of fence she wanted it to cover, wondering whether that … Read more
Helen Pritchard · July 15, 2026
Kitchen scraps alone won’t build the kind of camellia collection people photograph. I hear a version of this question constantly—usually phrased as “so you just toss coffee grounds and banana peels around and that’s it?”—from folks who’ve seen pictures of my 200-plus shrubs and assumed good intentions plus compost equals thriving plants. Truthfully, no. And … Read more
Helen Pritchard · July 15, 2026
Two hundred million years — give or take a few million — is roughly how long camellias have been sorting out which plants make good neighbors in the wild, long before any of us started drawing up companion-planting charts. And yet the internet keeps recycling the same handful of pairings: azaleas here, hydrangeas there, rinse … Read more
Helen Pritchard · July 7, 2026
Hi there! I’m Helen Pritchard, and I’ve been cultivating camellias in the beautiful Pacific Northwest for over two decades. With more than 200 named cultivars under my belt—ranging from sasanquas to japonicas, reticulatas, and hybrids—I’ve learned a thing or two about creating vibrant, healthy gardens. Friends and neighbors often stop by my patio, eyeing my … Read more
Helen Pritchard · June 28, 2026
Back in the winter of my fifth year growing camellias seriously, I nearly lost an entire bed because I misread what was happening in front of me. I’d stepped out with a mug of tea to admire ‘Debutante’ — a soft blush japonica that had anchored my Zone 8a border for over a decade at … Read more
Helen Pritchard · June 26, 2026
Most camellia growers don’t realize tea scale is already on their plants. I didn’t either—not until I zoomed in on the underside of a leaf from my ‘Yuletide’ one February morning and found what looked like tiny cream-colored bumps arranged in neat rows. That’s when I understood why my otherwise healthy japonica had started dropping … Read more
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 21, 2026
Monthly Camellia Care Calendar: What to Do Every Month of the Year Here’s something no plastic nursery tag will ever spell out: camellias don’t run on a single, generic “water and feed occasionally” schedule — they move through a distinct twelve-month rhythm, and missing the window for any one stage can cost you next season’s … 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 · June 16, 2026
Almost every camellia grower eventually settles on one watering routine and sticks to it year-round — the same amount, the same frequency, whether it’s February frost or July swelter. That assumption feels reasonable. It’s also exactly what cost me a ‘Nuccio’s Gem.’ The plant wasn’t lost to frost, and it wasn’t neglect either — it … Read more