Practical camellia care from two decades in the garden
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
Helen Pritchard · November 20, 2025
Yellow leaves dropping in October? Buds falling before they open? A healthy camellia bush shouldn’t behave this way, yet I see it happen in gardens across my zones 7b, 8a, and 8b more often than I’d like. Most camellia problems aren’t mysterious—they’re signals that something’s off balance. After tending over 200 named cultivars for two … Read more
Helen Pritchard · November 18, 2025
Eleven years back, I set a ‘Winter’s Star’ camellia into a north-facing corner of my Zone 6 garden, fully convinced that a nursery tag reading “cold hardy” meant the shrub would simply handle whatever winter threw at it. It didn’t. By February, the foliage had gone brittle and bronze, and I spent that entire spring … Read more
Helen Pritchard · November 15, 2025
Picking the Right Camellias for Your Garden Get the soil right, choose a good spot, and stay consistent with watering, and camellias will reward you generously. Between the range of flower shapes, colors, and bloom windows on offer, it’s realistic to have some camellia or another flowering from September clear through May. I started my … Read more
Helen Pritchard · November 13, 2025
Camellia landscaping opens up more design possibilities than most gardeners realize. With evergreen leaves, showy flowers, and a growth habit that adapts to nearly any setting, camellias rank among the most versatile plants you can build a landscape around. Whether your growing space is a modest patio or a sprawling estate lot, camellia landscaping has … Read more