Camellia ‘High Fragrance’. http://www.logees.com
I can just hear it now. A garden tour of some fine Southern plantation with a slightly-past-middle-aged woman drawing out that joyful word in her finest, syrupy southern twang for the ages, while pointing towards a prized potted standard. Camellias are about as southern as Scarlet O’Hara and Brett Butler, even though they are yet another Asian native which has been more successful here than there in terms of landscape plants. While those of us in the North again balk at the Southerner’s ability to cultivate beautiful plants during the season where six inches of snow on the ground is a standard- these plants do remarkably well in cool greenhouses.
Camellias, in addition to being great standards for a Southern garden, happen to be the same genus producing the world’s most widely consumed beverage- tea. I wouldn’t recommend trying to grow your own tea- as a moist, cool, mountainside is what truly brings out the flavor; but it is certainly possible to have a small novelty harvest if you truly are adamant about growing your own. I would instead go for the floral gold that ensures a bright, cheery bloom for those gray days when you really need a reminder that things do indeed grow somewhere this time of year. While you’re at it, go for pleasing the nose as well- since there are now many scented hybrids thanks to the many C. lutchuensis and C. sasanqua crosses. I can’t attest to having actually smelled any of the identified cultivars, but I can attest to their existence.
In Hot Springs, Arkansas, (of all places) there is a small botanical garden which features an impressive stand of Camellia crosses, and it was there that I for the first time ran across a scented hybrid. Actually I ran across a few, one a C. japonica cross, but the others likely a C. lutchuensis or C. yunnanensis cross. The C. japonica hybrid was very beautiful, but the smell was almost like a wax flower- it was so light it would hardly qualify for a spot in the scented garden. The fragrance to me is just very lightly of tea rose- almost like the dew on the petals light. The other hybrids though were more scented, being almost like Hyacinth without the knockout punch, like most scented flowers this season. I believe Tovah Martin made a comment on this phenomenon of most spring flowers being scented in the realm of Hyacinth this time of year in The Essence of Paradise, and I find the accuracy of that comment hilariously true.
In any case, there are many hybrids to choose from for your olfactory fill, in scents ranging from rosy, (as if Camellias aren’t rose-like enough) to honey, and Cinnamon sugar. I recommend going with Logee’s if you’re wanting to buy your own, as they have a good list of greenhouse cultivars available- but please don’t get carried away and start dressing in Antebellum attire and quoting “Gone With the Wind”, that’s the last thing we all need!
Fragrant Earth 