The gem of the winter garden (Date correction)

Laurie Williams, the owner of Bob Wines Camellia Gardens & Nursery, displays some camellia plants. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette file photo]

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Posted December 29, 2025 | By Belea T. Keeney, [email protected]

Correction: The show will be held Jan. 24 and 25. The initial post contained one wrong date.

This time of year, many of our landscapes look kinda, well, drab. The seasonal grasses have died off and are brown, the perky annual flowers are mostly gone and the trees are mostly bare. If you’d like a pop of color in an easy-care outdoor plant, then consider a camellia. Or 20.

Camellias are hardy, evergreen shrubs that do 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, 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 have), you will lose some flowers and buds, but the shrubs themselves will be fine. There’s no need to cover them but some folks do so 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 and, given their free-form growth patterns, any sort of sculpting pruning is heartily discouraged. Camellias aren’t grown for shape; they’re grown for flowers.

My camellia story started when I was a kid and my mother told me how her mother dug up and moved 40(!) camellias from their yard in Macon to their new home in St. Petersburg 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 was cleared and a McMansion had been built there last time I drove by it, which made me sad.

When I bought my 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 then and were clearly 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 looked. I never knew which variety they were, probably an heirloom given that the house was built in 1948 and the shrubs were over 10 feet tall.

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 too. Take a stroll through Bob Wines Camellia Gardens plant nursery on Southeast 38^th 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 acid 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 4^th 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.

The annual Ocala Camellia show take place Jan. 24 (1-5 p.m.) and 25 (noon – 4 p.m.) at Fort King Presbyterian Church, 13 NE 36^th Avenue, Ocala. Attendance is free and the club will have plants for sale. Anyone can offer blossoms for judging and entries will be accepted from 7-10 a.m. Jan. 24.

To learn more, go to fb.com/Ocala-Camellia-Society-100719056688048/?fref=nf and bobwinesnursery.com