Sasanqua Camellia Camellia sasanqua Plantation Pink

Plantation Pink is the sasanqua people reach for when the plant has to work as structure. The flowers are single, an open mid pink around a boss of gold stamens, lightly scented and carried in quantity through autumn, and the petals drop cleanly instead of browning on the bush. Foliage is small, dark and glossy year round with bronze tinted new growth, and the habit is upright and firm for a sasanqua, taking clipping without sulking. A boundary hedge, a wall espalier or a screen is where it goes.

The scent is worth siting for

Most camellias have no useful scent and this one has a little, which is a reason to think about placement rather than only about coverage. It is light and carries a short distance, so it is worth having near a door, along a path, beside a seat, or under a window that gets opened, and it is wasted on a back boundary where nobody stands in autumn. The clean petal drop points the same way, since this is a plant that can sit over paving without making work, which is not true of the japonicas in this range. It grows across temperate and subtropical gardens from the coast to the tablelands and is among the more adaptable sasanquas once the soil is right. Part shade with shelter from hot afternoon sun keeps the flowers clean, and plants set 700mm to a metre apart close over into a screen.

Hot masonry is the trap

Because it espaliers so readily, this cultivar ends up tied to walls, and the specific risk is a hot one. A north or west facing brick or rendered wall absorbs heat all afternoon and keeps radiating it into the evening, while the strip of soil at the footing dries faster than any sprinkler keeps up, partly because the wall sheds rain away from it as well. The plant scorches on the wall side, drops its buds and thins from the bottom, while an identical plant three metres out in the open bed does fine. Train it on a shaded or eastern wall instead. Hold the framework 50mm or so clear of the surface on battens so air moves behind it, and water the footing deeply and infrequently rather than lightly and often. Lime leaching out of the mortar in that same strip is worth checking before you plant.

Among the pink sasanquas

Exquisite is the paler, more openly branched single pink, and it suits a path or a pot better than a boundary. Jennifer Susan gives a double flower on softer arching wood that needs shelter from dry wind. Plantation Pink is firmer in the frame than either of them and the one that holds a long clipped face without going bare at the base, which is why it turns up on so many shaded boundaries. It is grown here through the full run of grades to advanced trees, so a screen can start close to finished height.

Two light cuts, not one hard one

Cut the hedge back in the weeks after the last flowers fall and treat that as the window. Buds for the coming autumn form on spring and summer growth, so a hedge sheared in January is a green wall for a year. Two light passes in the months following flowering build a denser face than one hard annual cut, and they stop the plant making the long unbranched wood that leaves gaps in a line. Check the base of an older hedge for bare stems: light regular clipping prevents that, and once it has happened a hard cut is slow to repair it. On an espalier, put the feed out from the wall where the roots actually run rather than tight against the footing, using a camellia and azalea product twice a year. Top the mulch up annually and leave a clear ring at each stem.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 12 sizes, from 70mm up to 150L, priced from $16.95 to $1199.00 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.