Planting and growing Camellias in your garden and raising new cultivars

Probably one of the most beautiful and most elegant flowers, camellias have blossoms that are similar to classy water lilies, peonies or water magnolias. Camellias have pleasant aromas and single or double flower. Camellias came from Eastern Asia . They are indigenous to North Korea , Japan , Vietnam and Nepal .

Camellias are scelerophyllous evergreens plants and they thrive in mountainous regions covered in dense forests. Camellias flourish in these high humid regions, which have very porous, water permeable soil.

History of camellias

Camellias are regarded as the oldest cultivated plants in the world, having been propagated first thousands of years ago. The tea plant, Camellias sinensis was very important and people were mainly captivated by its leaves, rather than its flowers. The leaves were used to make tea. This bushy plant motivated Europeans to collect the camellias, and bought it into Ireland and southern England .

The British, Dutch, French and the Portuguese realized how high the demand for tea was and attempted to grow it in those respective territories, instead of always having to import it from Asia . However this did not work because the European climate does not support tea production. They could not tea, instead focused on growing the camellia as a flowering plant.

From useful plant to ornamental plant

Lord Petre of Essex grew the beautiful, simple red-flowering Camellia japonica in his private greenhouse. It is believed that he was the first person to import camellias into Europe . Late on other camellia varieties found their way into Europe . The Methuselah of all European camellias has been growing in the garden of the Portuguese Villa Nova de Gaya for over 300 years. It has an amazing height of 15m and a width of 6m. From Europe , camellias then began their journey around the world reaching America , South Africa , New Zealand and Australia.

Raising new cultivars in Europe

European botanists started growing new camellia cultivars, which resulted in the birth of numerous species. In 1890 the Seidel Company in Dresden recorded over 1000 camellia varieties. The royal elite upper class decorated their gardens with attractive camellia plants. The camellias were in high demand when because they had an unusual flowering time it flowered when all other plants were dormant.

The most important camellia species and cultivars

Camellia plants have many features:

  • There are numerous shades of colour for the flowers except blue

  • There are many shapes of flowers which come in different sizes

Camellias' flowering period extends for more than 7 months and they generally live longer than most plants.

There are various types of camellia within the genus camellia.