The camellia is one of the best high quality ornamentals you can grow. Evergreen glossy foliage is attractive throughout the year and the blossoms are showy and come at a welcome time of year..late fall through spring. The one aspect they generally lack that most people wish for is fragrance. However, much ybridizing effort has myielded a good number of cvs. which now possess this attribute. The work has mainly been done with the fragrant species C. lutchuensis and the resulting first hybrids were white or blush with a spicy scent. Continued efforts have given us more colors and quite a varied array of foliage and growth habits. A welcomed characteristic is profuse blooming, especially on the smaller flowered cvs. They give the gardener a cloud of blooms for a long time, which cover the plant. Aside from that, their fragrance permeates teh surrounding air. They have all the good qualities of the older camellia cvs., but now have the additional trait of scent. The fragrance in many cases is spicy, almost cinnamon like. On a larger plant, that fragrance is easily discerned from a distance away. There are also newly introduced species camellias with scent. Among them are C. grisjii, C. tsaii, C. synaptica, each with valuable ornamental possibilities on their own.
From the hybrids now becoming available, we have cvs. such as Cinnamon Cindy, spicily fragranced of cinnamon, Hig Fragrance, with its medium rose to peony form double light pink flowers on a compact upright shrub, Koto no Kaori with small medium pink flowers in great profusion and single highly fragranced blooms, and the similar Minato no Akebono of similar habit and texture. These have small leaves and flowers, giving a pleasing gracefull effect in the garden, and you will often smell their scents before you see the blooming plant. There are others, so search them out from a specialist to add to the charm of your garden landscape!
If you choose to grow your plants in containers, you can move the plants into a prominent location for the bloom season, then out of sight later on if desired. You can also add a bloomng plant to a container grouping of other plants for a very nice display.
Regular culture for acid plants is all that is required and these are very easy care. Organic material added to any good potting mix to provide an acid soil, small amounts of acid type fertilizer, regular watering, and partial shade is all that is needed for good growth.
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