Sasanqua Camellia Camellia sasanqua Pure Silk

Pure Silk opens white with a soft pink flush along the petal edges, through autumn and into early winter, at a point in the year when a shaded bed is usually doing nothing at all. The leaves are small, glossy and dark, the habit dense and even, and the plant is produced here in every grade from small pots through to large containerised stock. That spread of grades is the point of it. This is a hedging and screening camellia bought by the run, and it doubles as a wall espalier or a pot beside a shaded entry.

Buying a hedge by the run

Uniformity is what you are paying for on a plant like this, so buy accordingly. Order the whole run at once and from a single grade, because plants raised in the same batch match each other in habit and vigour, and a hedge assembled from stock bought in instalments over two seasons never quite lines up. Set them around 750mm apart for a clipped face, or a metre for a softer screen. Part shade is both the published culture note and the safe position: morning sun is fine, hot afternoon sun in a dry inland garden is not. Soil acidic, free draining, plenty of organic matter, mulched rather than dug, with moderate water held even through summer while the buds are forming. Growth is slow to moderate, so the grade you plant largely decides when the hedge closes over.

What is buried along a new fence

What ruins boundary hedges is already in the ground before the plants arrive. The strip along a new fence or wall is where the mortar was mixed, the brick offcuts were dropped and the concrete washings went, and lime out of that rubble lifts the pH past anything a camellia can work in. The result is a run that yellows between the veins and stalls in patches while the rest of it grows away, which looks like a disease and is not. Dig the trench out properly, cart the rubble off rather than burying it deeper, and replace the fill with improved acidic soil before the plants go in. Doing it afterwards means lifting a hedge you have already paid for. On an established run that has gone that way, the practical option is to remove the affected plants along with the fill and replant, since sulphur will not work its way through a trench full of mortar.

Pure Silk or Setsugekka

Setsugekka is the other white here, but the bloom is larger and wavier and the bush more open, so it reads as a specimen or a wall plant. Pure Silk is denser and more uniform, which is what you want repeated forty times down a fence line. Beatrice Emily carries a formal white washed with lavender where the flower itself is the reason for planting. Choose Pure Silk when consistency across a long run matters more than any single bloom, and look at the mature grades when the screen has to work immediately. The pink at the petal edge also softens the line, since a long run of flat white reads harder at distance than it looks on one plant.

Keeping a long run even

Prune straight after the last flowers fall and treat that as the only window, since the coming season's buds form on new growth through spring and summer. Light clipping several times in the months after flowering builds a tighter face than one heavy annual cut. The discipline particular to a long hedge is doing everything to all of it at once. Feed the whole run on the same day with a camellia and azalea fertiliser and repeat in late summer, water it from a line laid the length of the hedge rather than by hand, and clip end to end in one session, because the plant that got less feed or less water is the one the eye finds from the far end of the garden. Keep mulch over the root zone year round.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 11 sizes, from 175mm up to 150L, priced from $26.95 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.