This is a rather fine flower from a camellia of which I am not fond. It looks better this year because I have disdubbed it every time I went near it. I don’t know the variety. Thom gave it to me years ago. It looked fine when it was in a grove of pines, but now that the pines are gone, it is the most prominent feature of the front garden, at least as viewed from the house. It is large, and red and green with no subtlety.
It is usually said that camellias like shade, but this one is now in full sun and seems to love it. Admittedly the red ones are said to tolerate sun better than paler ones. This one is growing rapidly and never gets mold or scale or any of the usual woes. Despite the fact that it displeases me visually, I can’t bring myself to cut it down because it is so healthy. The other shrubs and trees that have been rather randomly chosen to take over from the pines are still pretty small. Maybe the camellia will be less intrusive when they get bigger.
I planted this Loropetalum chinense var. rubrum ‘Chinese Pizzazz’ in 2005 to hide a length of chain-link fence. It is just beginning to flower. The leaves will become more burgundy-colored as the season progresses.
The National Arboretum calls this the “neon lights of the witchhazel family.” I like the fact that it blooms for a long time, is a cheerful color, forms a dense hedge, and has small leaves, so that it is easily pruned by shearing.
What most people fail to realize is that loropetalum is fast-growing and gets VERY LARGE–meaning about 10 feet in all directions in only a few years. There are several places on our little island where it has been planted recently to landscape a parking lot and within a few years will completely block the entrance to a shop or sidewalk.
p.s. I planted the pimientos seeds on December 26 and they are doing fine. Heirloom seeds are a burden, but Beezoo said pepper seeds would germinate when two years old and it appears she is right.
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This Camellia sasanqua is going over now. It’s been blooming since September. Mine is 4 years old and about 8′ high. There is one down the road that is about 15′ high and has been pruned into a multi-trunk tree.
I don’t know the variety. I thought it was in my notebook, but I can’t find it. Might it be ‘Pink Snow’? Can anyone enlighten me?
The petals fall to the ground (beautifully mulched with pine straw) in a pale pink carpet that looks like snow.
I love it.
Jan McDougall, who is a very fine Charleston horticulturist, says she cannot live without this book. I can’t say I use it as much as she does, but, if you live in the southeast, it is very useful in helping to figure out which varieties of a plant are most likely to do well in your area. It is not for beginners because it is sparsely illustrated, so you pretty much have to know what you are talking about before you begin.
For me, it suffers from the “coastal orphans” syndrome, meaning that Dirr is at UGA in Athens, and knows a lot more about conditions there than he does about the hot, steamy coast. For instance, he’s in love with Itea virginica (sweetspire), which is indeed a very nice shrub but, I discover to my sorrow, likes a lot more moisture in the soil than is common in a garden on the sandy coast sans irrigation.
It’s now so late in the season that getting plants in the ground is more important than finishing the paving. On the right is the Yoshino cherry in flower with the ‘Nelly Stephens’ holly looking very tiny on its left.
This trellis (left) hides the mess around the back door from the patio. I decided it was unrealistic to think the back door’s surrounds would ever be attractive. It is where everyone washes paint brushes, and drops pipes, hoses, junk when coming in for a meal or escaping from the rain. Better to hide it than hope to tidy it up. The main vine on it is Bignonia ‘Shalimar Red.’
In retrospect, this was a mistake. Crossvine is native, and gets much larger than I realized until I saw one climbing 3 stories up the naked concrete wall of the parking lot at the South Carolina Aquarium. Two years later, I am still hacking it back twice a year to prevent it taking the roof off the house. Why does it grow toward the house instead of our toward the sun as I’d hoped? I need to replace it with something more manageable. I also stuck in some morning glories for a little rapid cover.
To the right is the planting area by the breakfast room steps. (I have already started tiling the steps.) It contains the Lady Banks rose (Rosa bansksiae), which has languished in the front bed for two years because it gets no sun, as well as Gelsemium Rankinii, (swamp jessamine, from Secret Garden).
This is native, but less common and larger-flowered than the Gelsemium sempervirens (Carolina jessamine or jasmine) which scrambles all over our pine trees in February and March. As its name suggests, it is supposed to like lots of water, which it won’t get here.
The little boxwood on the right hides the outlet from the a/c system.
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