Hello, We recently bought two camellia japonica "Bob Hope" and they don't seem to be doing well. They are in pots outside in our front entrance. When we first got them I added peat to the top of the pots as well as blanketing them in burlap around the pot. Can you take a look at the pictures I've attached and give me some advice on what's going on with these plants? They look like they are dying. Thanks in advance!
When did you buy these? If it was shortly before December 22 last year and the plants hadn't been properly hardened off, the -13 C temperature in the Fraser Valley could have damaged them. C. japonica is supposed to be hardy to zone 7; so, it shouldn't be bothered by that temperature, but that assumes a normal transition to cold temperatures. I planted a Camellia in the ground last spring, and it still looks fine.
- Your camellias look like Camellia x williamsii and not C. japonica - it seems likely you were sold the wrong item. - C. japonica varies in hardiness between individual cultivars; during the worst-in-30 years winter of 1990 various long-established C. japonica burned in the collections of the Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle. While others did not. - Peat on top and a single layer of burlap around the outside will not do much to protect against a significant temperature drop - it is typical for commercial production operations in our region to overwinter containerized broadleaf evergreens in general inside greenhouses on a routine basis. - Plants in containers are ~20 degrees F. less hardy than those same kinds growing (and well established) in the ground. So, a shrub that kills to the ground at 0 degrees F. will be likely to be hurt by ~20 degrees F. in an unprotected pot. - It only takes a few hours below a given plant's required minimum temperature for damage to occur. - Roots are less hardy than tops, with tops being the last to show cold effects on a cold damaged container specimen. With young roots near pot walls being the first to be damaged - things may be a lot worse inside the pots than you are seeing looking only at the tops of your camellias at this time. - Hardiness zone designations assigned by commercial (and sometimes other) publications are frequently overoptimistic, based presumably on routine misinterpretation of the fact that temperatures indicated for each zone are average annual minimums - with the USDA system anyway - and not the coldest it gets. So, a particular kind of camellia being known to fail at 10 degrees F. does not make it hardy to Zone 7 (average annual minimum 0-10 degrees F.). It makes it hardy to Zone 8 at best, with a large percentage of locations even in that zone having temperatures below 10 degrees F. on occasion.
Thanks for the responses. The advice I got from the nursery about caring for these plants was not very good I see... Is it as simple as bringing these plants indoors to help 'resurrect' them?
