Gardeners World episode 3 2012: As the clocks move forward, the longer days of spring are welcomed by every gardener. It’s a busy time in the garden and the longer daylight hours present a great opportunity to get on with larger gardening projects. Joe Swift joins Monty Don in his garden to get to grips with lining his newly created pond, giving plenty of advice for anyone wanting to use water in the garden.
Joe also continues his design series with a look at how crucial the choice of landscaping materials can be to a successful garden. He also illustrates how water can add atmosphere and surprise, and he shows us how we can apply these design principles to our own gardens.
From her garden in Devon, Carol Klein responds to a viewer’s gardening dilemma by showing us how to select and propagate plants suited to a dry bank situation. And Rachel de Thame visits the sensational camellia display at Chiswick House and Gardens, London, to find out the fascinating history of the collection held there.
Gardeners World episode 3 2012
How to grow camellias
Camellia are easy to grow, glossy evergreens. They are ideal for containers. Their showy flowers come in whites, pinks and reds and appear early in the season; a time when not much else is flowering. Camellias do not need to be pruned regularly but, if they outgrow the allotted space, you can trim them into shape after flowering. Hard pruning is best carried out in March, but it will be a couple of years or more before they flower well again.
Camellia is a genus of flowering plants in the family Theaceae. They are found in eastern and southern Asia, from the Himalayas east to Japan and Indonesia. There are 100–300 described species, with some controversy over the exact number. There are also around 3,000 hybrids. The genus was named by Linnaeus after the Jesuit botanist Georg Joseph Kamel, who worked in the Philippines and described a species of camellia (although Linnaeus did not refer to Kamel’s account when discussing the genus). Camellias are famous throughout East Asia; they are known as cháhuā in Chinese, tsubaki in Japanese, dongbaek-kkot in Korean, and as hoa trà or hoa chè in Vietnamese.
