Sasanqua Camellia Camellia sasanqua Paradise Pearl

Paradise Pearl belongs to the Paradise range raised on the New South Wales Central Coast, a group bred with Australian gardens and clipped screens in mind. The flowers are pale and pearl toned through autumn, but the reason people plant it is the frame underneath: small leaves, fine willing branching, and a dense response to being cut. It is a hedge and espalier plant before it is anything else, and it is offered in the smaller and mid grades that suit training a fence line from the beginning.

The grades tell you the job

It is worth reading the pot sizes as a statement about the plant. This is stock you buy by the dozen rather than one of, and that matches the way it is meant to be used: planted small along a run, cut early and often, and built into a face over several seasons instead of delivered as one. Growth is slow to moderate, so density comes from branching, not from extension, and starting small is less the slow option than the option that produces a solid base. It suits temperate districts through to the warm subtropics and holds its leaves year round. Part shade with morning light is the position, and it is worth keeping off a hot western wall. Soil acidic, free draining and full of organic matter, mulched over the shallow roots, watered deeply and less often, never in daily sprinkles.

Tree roots on a boundary

The trap with a fence line planting is competition, and it is why so many camellia hedges sit still. A boundary is usually where the established trees already are, and their root mat occupies the top 300mm of soil along the whole run. A camellia dropped into that in a hole the size of its pot gets neither water nor nutrients, so the plants stay the size they arrived at, never knit into a line, and the cultivar gets the blame. Cut a wide continuous trench and improve the whole of it, not a series of individual holes, put the hedge on its own irrigation line so it is not living on whatever the lawn sprinklers throw over the edge, and accept that the section running under a large tree will always want more water and more feed than the rest. Where the roots are too heavy to cut through, a raised bed along the fence beats fighting for the same soil.

Pearl beside Blush and Setsugekka

Paradise Blush is the sibling from the same breeding, carrying the pink flush at the petal edge and grown through to advanced grades for a screen that has to look established from the day it goes in. Paradise Pearl is the paler flower in the grades you buy when you intend to train the hedge yourself. For a white sasanqua with presence as a single plant rather than as a repeated unit, Setsugekka carries a larger, wavier bloom on a more open frame. Take Pearl for the run and Setsugekka for the feature, and note that the two Paradise selections match each other closely enough in leaf and clipping response that one run can be finished with the other.

Building a base that stays furnished

Cut as soon as flowering finishes and not afterwards, because next autumn's flowers sit on wood the plant makes in spring and summer, and a mid year tidy up quietly removes them. On a new hedge, start shaping in the first year instead of letting the plants run up and cutting them back later: side branching produced early is what makes a hedge solid at ground level, and a base that has gone bare is slow to refurnish. Set plants around 800mm apart for a clipped face, or a metre where the screen is allowed to thicken naturally. Lift the skirt of an established run slightly so air moves underneath it. Spread a camellia and azalea product along the full length of the improved trench, not in a ring around each plant, twice a year, so the roots competing with the tree line have something to grow into. Keep mulch topped up over the root zone and clear of the stems.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 3 sizes, from 140mm up to 250mm, priced from $16.95 to $59.95 per plant. The size shown is the pot the plant arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. These are younger plants, priced for planting in quantity, and they establish quickly once in the ground. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to camellia hedges and winter flowers.