Saving Heritage Camellias From St Ives, The Camellia Grove Site

June 2014

We approached Bupa who was the current owner of the Camellia Grove site in St Ives, knowing these camellias have had a long history in the area and were in great need of care. We offered to save as many as we could, with the understanding that when they finish their project we would re-plant back twenty. We were able to save approximately ninety.

September 2014

We are given the go ahead, not an ideal time as camellias are about to throw their new growth, but demolition of site was going to happen in December so it was now or never. We needed a large excavator to dig these out, so we cut down each side & then under with the bucket, before hand cutting the camellia back to approx. 1.5m high. In some cases there wasn’t a leaf left on the bush. Once lifted out of the ground, we trimmed the root system into a manageable size as we will plant these into grow bags. We transported these bare rooted back to our nursery in Glenorie & proceeded to plant into 750 litre bags, 30 cubic metres of high grade camellia soil mix was used & we housed these under a shade house structure.

October – December 2014

We started with a fortnightly watering of  Maxicrop root hormone solution, there were no signs of growth for months, late December we were looking closely at the stems and to our amazement there were little growth eyes coming from the stems, what a great relief!

January 2015

We applied half a bag of composted cow manure around each, then applied some slow release fertiliser.

February – June 2015

Growth happening all over, dark green new growth no signs of mite or scale.

June – September 2015

All nice growth and very little flower as expected.

October – December 2015

We re-located out of the shade house into an increased sun & light position to promote more growth.

January 2016

We have some fantastic growth & are able to propagate from this approx. 10,000 cuttings.

May 2016

Looking very well with plenty of flower buds & occasional flowers.

January 2017

Very hot weather Propagated approx. 15,000 cuttings

February 2017

Very hot some burn on foliage

March 2017

Nice rain after a mulch of cow manure, foliage shiny dark green

April 2017

Very good results with propagation

June 2017

After a very hot summer, conditions very dry, we are on the verge to having a great season of flower with our Japonicas