Yuletide Camellia

For a marvelous addition to your Winter Garden, add Yuletide Camellia (Camellia sasanqua 'Yuletide'), one of the most popular of the Camellia grown in the home garden today! A dependable performer, the Yuletide features the perfect bloom time and incredible, bright-red, single blooms.

In some parts of the country, the Yuletide blooms from December through March. No wonder it has found a place in the hearts of all who love the Holidays! These big red blooms will be sure to fill up your local pollinators hungrily seeking out pollen and nectar resources during this lean time of year!

This is a fall-blooming, evergreen shrub with fall color and year-round ornamental appeal. As you watch your landscape fade and settle in for winter, Yuletide Camellia will just be getting started. Three-inch blooms of breathtaking scarlet will appear in fall, their single blossoms cradling bright yellow stamens.

The glossy, dark green foliage will fill out your shrub, the perfect showcase for the showy blossoms and a broad-leaf evergreen presence in your yard throughout the year. Bring them indoors for a long-lasting cut flower arrangement. You and your guests will enjoy this cheery red visual welcome to winter! Be sure to cut a few branches with blooms and the dark green leaves.

Yuletide Camellia has an upright form and compact branching habit. It's easily pruned to suit any garden situation! Hardy throughout USDA growing zones 7-10 as year-round landscaping ornamentals but in Growing Zones 6 and lower, these are fantastic Patio plants that can be brought into a greenhouse or bright sunny window indoors for the winter.

Planting and Application:

There are so many ways to enjoy this versatile and charming plant. No one needs to know how easy it is to grow!

Try a Yuletide Camellia on either side of an entryway, or at the corner of your foundation planting to anchor your house to the landscape. The great, bright-red flowers in the fall through winter and the dark, evergreen foliage make this a perfect accent plant in a shrub border. Or, allow it to grow as it will in the center of a Boxwood-lined garden bed.

These would look stunning as a hedge and screening plant at your fence line, or to hide utilitarian corners of your landscape. Plant them 5 to 7 feet apart on center, measuring from the center of one to the center of the next. They will grow together and create a lovely, solid screen.

Try it as a beautiful espalier trained flat against a wall or fence. This ancient pruning technique is especially valuable in a smaller landscape where space is at a premium. Can you imagine how pretty these blooming shrubs would look as living walls of a Garden Room or outdoor dining room? These evergreen shrubs will look great all year long!

For apartment or condo living, Yuletide Camellia can be kept small as the perfect container plant. Plant one or more in matching planters for years of enjoyment on the patio. What a nice, easy way to screen your seating area! For a modern look, use a duplicate series of the same container style. Or, curate a special personalized collection of pots in different colors and patterns. Go bold, as this variety can definitely handle a dramatic treatment.

• Fragrant Single, Brilliant Red Blooms & Bright Yellow Stamens
• Can Blooms for Months During The Fall to Early Spring!
• Wonderful Cut Flowers & Pollinator Friendly
• Fine-Textured, Lustrous Green Leaves Remain Evergreen
• Compact Plant Has Medium Growth Rate
• Great in Containers, Hedges, Screening, Seasonal Patio Plants & Specimens

#ProPlantTips for Care:

Yuletide Camellia are great in part shade locations that get protection from the hot afternoon sun. This is a low-maintenance shrub that grows naturally beautiful and can be a solution to many sun-filtered locations where other plants would not succeed. (Most Camellia sasanqua varieties are a bit more tolerant of sun exposure than the sinensis varieties).

Choose a location that drains well. If poor drainage is suspected, elevate your planting by mounding up. Bring in additional soil to a height of 18 inches and plant directly in that mound. Amend the soil with a few handfuls of acidic pine needles.

Camellias are adapted to many soil types but prefer slightly acidic soil with a pH of 5 to 6.5. Fertilize twice a year with Dr. Earth Acid Lovers Premium and Organic Fertilizer in the late winter and early summer.

For container growing choose a potting mix recommended for Azaleas, Camellias, and Rhododendrons. Because it is so adapted to container growing, it can be grown outside of its recommended zones and moved to protection from extreme winter cold or hot dry summer days, when needed.

Typically, Camellias require little pruning. Clean out dead leaves after flowering and prune out interior dead limbs and twiggy growth after flowering in early spring, or prune to shape at any time during the year.

Camellias are shallow-rooted, so they appreciate mulched beds to protect their roots from heat and drying out. Spread a 3 to 4-inch layer of mulch to keep the roots cool and the surface moisture consistent. Apply the mulch all the way out to 3 feet away from the plant's trunk.

• Widely Adapted - Grow in Part Shade or Shade
• Easy to Grow in Acidic, Well-Drained Soils
• Displays Drought Tolerance Once Established
• Prune After Flowering
• Low Maintenance

Yuletide is a wonderful variety that was introduced by the world-famous Camellia Nursery, Nuccio's, in 1963 and registered with the American Camellia Society in 1971. Like its close relative Camellia sinensis; leaves of the Camellia sasanqua are made into tea in many parts of Japan.

Just as its name implies, it is a particularly prolific bloomer in December. Yuletide Camellia is the perfect gift for yourself and your yard this year! Order yours at Nature Hills!