If you don’t yet have one of these easy to care for shrubs
in your garden, consider getting a camellia for flowers
that will sparkle in a cool season landscape.
This time of year, many of our landscapes look kinda, well, drab. The seasonal grasses have died off and look brown, the perky annual flowers are mostly gone and the trees are nearly bare. If you’d like a pop of color in an easy to care for outdoor plant, then consider a camellia. Or 20.
Camellias are hardy, evergreen shrubs that do really well in this part of the country. The range for them growing easily in the Southeast ends at about Dade City to the south; anything farther south than that and it just doesn’t get cold enough for them. To the north, South Carolina is at the tip of their range. Anything farther north than that, folks have to use greenhouses for protection, but we don’t have that problem. If there’s a hard freeze during blooming season (usually November to March, depending on the variety), you will lose some flowers and buds, but the shrubs will be

just fine. There’s no need to cover them but some folks do to try and preserve flowers.
Camellias don’t need a lot of pruning or spraying or fussing with. Once established, they do well with a deep watering once a week (about one inch) if we don’t get rain. Given their more free-form growth patterns, any sort of sculpting pruning is heartily discouraged. Camellias aren’t grown for shape; they’re grown for flowers.
My own camellia story started when I was a kid, after my mother told me how her mother dug up and moved 40 camellias from their yard in Macon, Georgia, to their
new home in St. Petersburg, Florida in the mid-1950s. Now that’s dedication. (Or Wacko Garden Grandma behavior; I’m not sure which.) Alas, the lot where they had the last of those bushes growing was cleared and a McMansion had been built there the last time I drove by it, which made me sad.

When I bought a house in Zephyrhills in 2002, it already had four well-established, rounded (which means badly pruned) camellias in the front yard. They were probably about 40 years old and had been neglected. I dug out my grandmother’s 1954 edition of Camellia Care and started fertilizing, watering and lightly pruning. To my joy, the flowers came back with a vengeance, and neighbors driving by stopped to tell me how pretty they were. I never knew which variety they were—probably an heirloom given that the house was built in 1948—but the shrubs were more than 10 feet tall and the blooms were pretty and pink.
This time of year, camellia flowers are blooming all-around town. There are several lots in the downtown historic district and southeast neighborhoods that have some. Sholom Park has several dozen camellias. Take a stroll through the Bob Wines Camellia Gardens plant nursery on Southeast 38th Street and you’ll be tempted to buy a few. It’s a good time of year to transplant them. Just be sure you put them in slightly higher than ground level at the same depth they are in the pot. It’s easy to drown them if they’re planted too deep.
Camellias need some sun protection; these are not full-sun plants. They do well near oak and pine trees, and like acidic soil. Mulch them with oak leaves and pine needles to help conserve moisture and cooler temps in the summer. I fertilize around the summer holidays: Memorial Day, July 4th and Labor Day. You don’t want to fertilize after September because the buds start to set in late September and early October, and you don’t want to encourage new leaf growth then. The few times I’ve had some scale issues, I do a spray down with Neem oil and the plants have been fine.
If you get hooked on these lovely flowers, the Ocala Camellia Society meets September through March. Meetings include a guest speaker, snacks, a Q&A session and the camaraderie that comes from hanging out with fellow flower lovers.

This year’s Ocala Camellia show will take place January 25th and 26th at Fort King Presbyterian Church at 13 NE 36th Avenue, Ocala. Attendance is free, and the club will have plants for sale. Show entries will be accepted from 7 to 10am on Saturday and you do not need to be a club member to enter blossoms. The show will be open to the public from 1 to 5pm on Saturday and 10am to 4pm on Sunday. To learn more, go to fb.com/Ocala-Camellia-Society-100719056688048/?fref=nf
A native Floridian and lifelong gardener, Belea spends her time off fostering cats and collecting caladiums. You can send gardening questions or column suggestions to her at belea@magnoliamediaco.com