The Photographic Garden Diary : April's Camellias

This year all Camellia have  by some unknown collusion  decided to flower at the same time:

Hagoromo in pots on the terrace

detail of Hagoromo flower

Shiragiku

Dr. Burnside

and Mary Phoebe Taylor. She sheds her blossoms complete which give a nice still-life picture together with other leaves from a copper beech and a Magnolia tree above her: 

 

In recent years their flowering time was spread out between December/January (Hagoromo) and May at the latest (Shiragiku) with Mary Phoebe Taylor (end of March) slightly before Dr. Burnside (April). We have no explanation for this year's anomaly.  

We had planted tulips in autumn. My idea was to have them accompany the Rhododendrons with some light pink/lavender low on the ground in May. I had chosen the late tulip "Cum laude" supposedly to bloom late in May, on 40 cm stalks - I bought them on the market from a Dutch vendor with large open vats full of bulbs. My fault: what came out of the ground was a bit surprising: a light reddish-pink early tulip, in April, quite large and on rather long stems. I have no clue what its name might be. 

(in the foreground is the well-scented Narcissus poeticus)

So far we like it and find the combination with Dr. Burnside and the red maple pleasing. It adds some red colour to the lower parts in the garden and gives Dr Burnside some grounding, making it look less artificial in its  red splendour. A few solitary bulbs of "Cum laude" seem to have been present in the delivery, albeit flowering earlier than proclaimed - what an odd mix! 

Camellias

This winter is unusually warm here in Germany. For the first time ever,  I have camellia and witchhazel flowering together on the terrace since christmas.

                                                                                         Camellia japonica "Hagoromo"
                                                            with witchhazel Hamamelis x intermedia "Pallida" in the background

Camellias have been growing in my garden since 1997, when the first plant was given to me: the perfect white Camellia "Shiragiku".
I planted it on the west side of the house (we then lived 400 m above sea level in the Taunus hills) where it survived several winters with lots of snow and temperatures down to -15 ° C. It started flowering only at the beginning of May, together with the white Rhododendron-Hybrid "Cunningham's White" which we had many of - so that the effect of the white perfect flowers was largely lost. When we moved to a lower area, the bush received a place on the north side of the new house, with lots of light from above but no sun. Here it has been thriving ever since, surviving the strongest winters without protection outdoors and it flowers at the beginning of  April  a month prior to the white rhododendrons. We have planted it in fresh rhododendron soil a couple of times - Camellias can be replanted like rhododendrons without loss to growth if done carefully. In our experience the only thing that would prevent them from flowering is a very dry summer and autumn. When the new flower buds are formed, late summer to October, they need a lot of water and the soil should always be moist. Otherwise they might throw off the flower buds in spring just when you wait for them to open.

My second Camellia was "Mary Phoebe Taylor". She is of a more delicate kind, pink flowers with long lank branches, that can be trailed up a wall. Her flowers are slightly hanging down, so they are best seen from below. We have replanted her in different positions several times and have found a place in the back of a border under tree cover which she seems to like. She is less frost-hardy than the other two.

My favourite is "Dr Burnside" - an amazing bush. I bought it in 2004 and planted it close to a west facing wall with no morning sun for protection. There it was rapidly overgrown by the rose "Rambling Rector" that grew next to it and I forgot about the camellia. In 2010 our new gardener Paul started work and he rediscovered it and moved it a bit to the front out of the wall's shade. And now the bush looks like this

and flowers every March/April - at a time when the garden is still quite bare. The sight of this bush in flower is stunning -  I pass by in the mornings when I go out and I always have to walk over and admire and check whether they are real or some Heinzelmännchen secretly attached plastic flowers to the bush - it looks artificial and a bit immodest and boisterous in our humble garden, but very healthy, and very out of this world in cold German early spring.

Camellia "Dr Burnside"