ARS Southern Tasmania Newsletter – October 2017

• Date: 6th October 2017
• author: Lesley Gillanders

IN MY GARDEN

A glorious day of sunshine signalled the arrival of spring throughout our garden at the beginning of September. There are bulbs in flower and the shrubs and trees are breaking into leaf. The two specimens of Prunus'Mount Fuji' have flower buds exploding into double white flowers. There are the pretty tufts of white and yellow stamens on Fothergilla major.

Our plant of Camellia reticulata 'Alan Watt' is covered with large double red flowers. The sister plant of this Camellia is C.r.'George Wittbreuk' They were both raised from seed years ago by the late Alan
Watt, a former member of our Society. Alan kept one plant and gave a second one to his neighbour, George. When they first flowered, George had the better one of the two. Cuttings were offered to Ken and he successfully propagated more plants from each one. To distinguish between them, as the leaf was the same, we named the red one C.r. 'Alan Watt' and the other one, which is a slightly paler red, and has a suffusion of pink, C.r. 'George Wittbreuk'.

Camellia 'Sweet Jane' is a most attractive shrub with the unopened flower buds being the most appealing feature to me. These buds show as a white flower to open but the tips of each bud is a pretty deep pink. When the whole plant is covered with these unopened buds, it is quite eye catching. When Ann brought along a specimen of Camellia 'High Fragrance' to a recent garden visit, we were all taken with it. Then to my delight I found that Ken had planted one in a large tub at home where it had six flowers just opening.

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