Camellias are the classic broadleaf evergreens of the Southern garden, prized as much for handsome year-round foliage as for the extravagant flowers that open from autumn deep into spring. Glossy-leaved and slow to outgrow a place, they bloom through the cool months when the rest of the garden rests, in forms that run from simple singles to dense, formal doubles across snow-white, blush, and deep red.

In the landscape they are elegant, structural, and long-lived. A single camellia makes a polished evergreen specimen; a row gives a refined screen or hedge that flowers in winter; grown against a wall or beneath high trees, they light the shaded parts of a garden when color is scarce. The glossy foliage earns a place in every season, and the bloom simply crowns the year.

We grow camellias for the way they hold a garden together through the year and give it flower at its bleakest. In a Southern climate they are among the most rewarding of all evergreens, tolerant of shade, generous with bloom, and steady for decades. Their winter flowers also feed the earliest and latest pollinators, offering nectar in the cold months when little else is open.

Give them part shade, acid, well-drained soil rich in organic matter, and shelter from harsh sun and wind. Set them among our Azaleas & Rhododendron for a classic acid-soil planting, underplant with our Ferns, and reach for Shade Lovers for companions in the same cool, shaded ground.