Japanese Camellia Camellia japonica Great Eastern

Australian nurseries have grown Great Eastern for well over a century, and it is still the japonica chosen for size rather than novelty. The blooms are large and deep red, opening loose and full instead of settling into a tight rosette, and they are carried on an upright bush that puts on height and width with age until it reads as a screen. It belongs at the back of a shaded bed, along a boundary that needs covering, or standing on its own where there is room for it to spread.

Give it the room it will take

Temperate and cool temperate gardens, the tablelands and elevated subtropical districts all suit it, with flowering running from winter into spring. It handles slightly more sun than the average japonica once established, but part shade out of hot afternoon wind is where the blooms last. Growth stays slow to moderate regardless, so the size it eventually reaches is a matter of decades, not seasons, and the common mistake is not planting it too far apart but too close. Allow around 1.2 metres between plants in a screen, against the 700mm you would use for a narrow cultivar, and keep it out of a strip beside a path where it will be cut back every year and never look right. Soil acidic, free draining, improved with organic matter and then mulched, never dug.

Petal blight and the annual clean up

The problem to plan for on a plant this size is camellia petal blight. In a wet spring the open blooms rot from the centre outward, go brown and slimy at the edges and fall, and the fungus carries over in the spent petals lying under the plant, so each year seeds the next. There is no home garden spray that deals with it. The control is mechanical and it is annual: rake the fallen flowers up as they drop, put them in the bin, not the compost, and lay fresh mulch under the canopy so anything left behind is buried. A bush this size drops a great many flowers, which is the second reason to keep it away from pool surrounds and entries, since japonica blooms fall whole and mark paving as they go over.

Set against Black Tie

Black Tie is the other red japonica here and it is the opposite plant: darker, smaller in flower, narrow and formal, made for a clipped line. Great Eastern is broader in frame, older in the Australian trade and much larger in bloom, and it is grown on into the mature grades, so an established screen is available rather than a decade of waiting for one. If you want red near paving, neither japonica is the answer; Yuletide sheds petal by petal instead, and flowers in autumn rather than winter into spring.

Renovating an old plant

Japonicas will break from cuts made into bare older wood, which is what makes an overgrown Great Eastern a recoverable plant rather than a removal job. Take it back over two seasons, not one: cut a third to a half of the framework the first year, straight after flowering, and let the plant refurnish before touching the rest. The timing is the part that is not negotiable, because buds for the following winter form on the growth that follows the cut. A renovated plant has to be fed to rebuild the wood it has just lost: a camellia and azalea product behind the cut, a second dose as the buds form, and water kept up right through summer. Yellow blades with green veins on an established plant mean the soil has turned alkaline or the roots have been dry, and iron chelates only paint over whichever it was.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 3 sizes, from 200mm up to 150L, priced from $45.95 to $1259.00 per plant. The size shown is the pot the plant arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. The smaller pots hold younger plants that cost less each and establish quickly, which suits hedges, screens and mass planting where the plant count adds up. The larger sizes carry several more years of growth on the farm and give height and presence straight away, which is what you want for a single feature position or a screen that cannot wait. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to camellia hedges and winter flowers.