Thanks.

Other info that may be useful... provide acid soil, acid mulch, afternoon shade, water (moist to a depth of 1.5 - 2 feet) and about a cup of cottonseed meal yearly in early spring after flowering (always water after fertilizing). Visit the American Camellia Society Website for additional info.

Luis

Another alternative is to check out the inventory at your local nurseries since, some of them can special order for you too.

For example, one of my local nurseries carries camellias from wholeseller Monrovia (www.monrovia.com) and the local nursery will special order when their inventory does not include one that I want.

Some of your local nurseries in Tenn. may do likewise.

Luis

Some older cultivars also known to survive below zero are 'Kumasaka' and 'Paulette Godard'.

I was told that the Pink Icicle plants are cold hardy but the flowers are not. It is also reported that you should wrapping your Pink Icicles with bubble wrap whenever the forcasts predict freezing or excessively windy and freezing days and/or nights. Then when the weather calms and the temps rise again above freezing unwrap them and continue enjoying the ongoing reblooms through winter until February.

Here, camellias start the season loaded with buds. When they sense it's time, a few start to open. If a hard freeze comes, those that are open turn brown and drop off. When it's warm again, more open up. That repeats throughout the winter. The C. sasanquas have started, the others have different start times among the C. japonicas. "Blood of China' usually hardly begins to bloom until April and frequently the buds blast due to heat and we don't see all of them bloom.

Here's one difference between a near-zone 7 and a true zone 8b where camellias thrive: When we have a 'cold spell' here the temperature may drop below freezing during the night and sub-freezing temps last only a few hours. The plants adapt to that. They have more trouble adapting to freezing temps that come and stay for days.

If I were researching camellias for a colder climate, I would search all the university hort sites I could find and read all the books the library could borrow for me on camellias. I would look for those that bloom early on, like the sasanquas, and those that bloom late among the Camellia japonicas, so that I had a better chance that buds would not freeze before they opened well, or freeze just as they came into bloom. I would plan to plant in the best sheltered area I could find. My Mathotiana in in a southwest facing corner partially sheltered by the overhang of the house.

Good Luck,
Nell

These Camellias are 3 'Pink Icicles', that I have been moving into the garage during the below freezing times and putting back out side any time the temps have risen above freezing. That is what I consider a lot of work.

Our recent severe winter event formed drifting snow wind patterns that have exposed the best place along the northern east side of my house, for planting them.

In response to the concept that wrapping them with bubble wrap to keep the buds and flowers from freezing, during such low temperature drops, seems like too much trouble. I certainly think that would be a lot less trouble than last week, when I had to move my current moderately heavy 3 gallon size potted camellias in and out of the garage almost daily as the temps rose above freezing for short periods almost every day.