So, clearly, you planted roses well-suited to your area, and did a good job of placing and planting them.
HOORAY! Congratulations.
It's SUPPOSED to work that way!

Jeri

Clay soils are difficult, I think from most usual ornamental plants, roses are the only ones that love clay and the only ones that would grow even in non amended clay.

Also many plants do not like the combination of clay and sun - I am slowly replacing other shrubs in my full sun area with roses, since they are the only plants that do well in that location, together with daylilies, thistles, phlox, malvas, lavateras, some geraniums and some campanulas.

Maybe hibiscus would be a good choice for you too, since it is a warm climate plant? Here I have seen quite a few grown in heavy sea clay soils and it is on a border of its hardiness zone, so it might do well for you and they come in wide range of colors.

About lavender, while often people try to make combination of roses and lavenders, you have to keep in mind that they like completely different growing conditions. Lavenders like poor and dry soils, which means no fertilizer, not much of watering and good drainage. Fertilizer really is a killer for plants that like poor soils (especially bulbs), because those plants often are adapted to grow in mountainy conditions, with very shallow and poor top soil. Feeding them is the same as throwing 5 meat courses feast to a vegetarian.

Another thing with lavenders that at least worked for me was buying big plants. Small bands do not make it here most of the time (except what I seeded, although lavender is notorious for its refusal to grow from seed - go figure...), but I had very good success rate with plants that I bought as a gallon pot or bigger, especially Lavandula angustifolia.

Lose the morea, seriously. It's pretty when the plant is young but it gets big and nasty when it gets older, a mix of dead grey foliage (that you can't remove) and new. Yuck. It also eventually reseeds everywhere.

My experience with lavenders is the opposite of elmire's, except about fertilizer--lavenders don't need fertilizer any more than rocks do. The 4" pots do better for me than 1 gallons. The trick with lavenders is check the rootball and get one that isn't pot-bound. It makes all the difference. When the pot is stuffed full of roots the plant never takes off. It's no time to plant now though. Wait until October, and don't water them too much.

Dwarf lavenders have been much better than the full sized ones, unless you are alert and shear them back regularly. The species get big fast, then split open exposing dead wood. The dwarvish ones spread out without splitting, with the old dead foliage nicely hidden under new growth. I get seedlings, so if I see a good seedling, I pull out the old one and the new one takes over. Not all seedlings are good.

With the camellia- mine do best in soil that hasn't been amended at all. Stick it in straight clay and it should do fine. Did you add 'good dirt' to the hole?

I live in Louisiana which is famous for beautiful old camellias and I think they are hard to grow! Here, they do not like to be in full sun-under growth for tall pines and hardwoods is where they are the loveliest, kind of like dogwoods. The prettiest ones are in the gardens of old homes. It is said they like acid soil. They don't like drought or wet feet. The only one I have grown successfully was supposed to be "White by the Gate" but it is not! It is red and white striped like peppermint but it is growing and blooming well. No scale or disease. I have "Taylor's Pride" in a pot but it is not exciting to me. My favorite is "Pink Perfection" which is perfectly named. They do grow slowly though.

what is morea?

aimeekitty - that was my experience, too, when I first started gardening. That is why I chose to have a (mostly) rose garden. Because the roses thrived when everything else whined! I'm getting better, and so is my soil, but I have learned to love roses for their tenacity as well as their beauty.

Suzy, never heard it called Morea. We call it African Iris. I did read recently on a tag that it should only be in morning sun. This is after mine grew in all day southern sun for 3 years in straight sand, no watering. They didn't bloom a whole lot but they spread and got big.

Sherry

Here is a link that might be useful: Morea

Morea is botanically named Dietes iridiodes. I echo the thought that it's not a good plant for the long-term. It gets very large, with a thick root mass, and lots of browning leaves. Theoretically, you cut it back and/or divide it periodically - practically, you try to do that and either give up or dig the darned thing out altogether. For commercial plantings, or if you have unlimited space, they are ok.

I have clay soil, too, and started out growing roses because they bloomed no matter what I did. I am from Ohio, land of rain and deep loam soil, and Sacramento's hard clay no-rain-for-eight-months garden simply baffled me. My observation is that some varieties of plants like lavender do ok in clay but lack of drainage is very bad for them. I've put in raised beds, drainage pipe and lots of organic material in the soil and mulching, and my drainage still isn't good. English lavenders croak in a year. Spanish lavender will survive. Makes sense, if you think about it.

Keep trying things. Get cuttings or divisions from friends if you can, and pay attention to what grows in gardens around you. Oddly enough, white phlox (Mt. Fuji) is one of my best companion plants. It doesn't mildew and blooms and blooms. Iris do well. True geraniums often need shade and moisture, but sanguineum species are good for me. Don't forget that so-called drought tolerant plants need water to establish, and periodic soakings even once they are in the ground (unless they are natives, which may not want ANY water once they are established).

Camellias need acidic soil, which you probably don't have. Moisture and organic matter in the soil are good, too, but once again, they want drainage.

Thank goodness that roses will keep on rewarding you as you figure out what else you can grow. I'd never have become a gardener without their beauty to encourage me!
Anita

Aimeekitty- We have hot, dry summers, clay soil and my Hidcote lavender has been wonderful. I chose it because it's the only lavender that's supposed to survive zone 4 winters, but it's been great with the roses. I water it all the time, planted it in the same type of soil as the roses (1/2 clay, 1/2 aged horse manure) and it's been very happy. Second year for most of them, but I did get two more at Lowe's last week. (I got them all there.)

Hidcote lavender and May Night salvia both look great with the roses, but again, I'm in a much colder zone in the winter, but summers are in the high 90's to low 100's.

I agree with you about the roses...if you choose the right roses for your area, they are easy to grow. So far, the happiest this year seem to be the damasks, the Fantin Latours, Trier and Darlow's Enigma...it's huge! :)

Jeri-
Well, mostly I planted roses well-suited to my area because I was able to get a lot of advice from this forum and people like you. :) :) :)

elemire -
I haven't heard of malvas (mallows) before... I wonder if my nursery has some? They look really pretty!

Which geraniums and campanulas might work well for me?

I think maybe I should suck it up and try some daylilies, there are so many unusual ones. I get tired of the ones you always see, but that's not all there is.

hoovb and cemeteryrose,
- Maybe I can replace my morea with daylilies? They'd bloom more and wouldn't have the warning label attached that many people give me about morea. (I wish I'd known before we planted them...! But I'd only heard that they were easy to grow)

Anita,
thanks for the recommendations on some plants. I was already considering trying some phlox, so I'll try white phlox and see how it does. I have a slightly more-water area of my yard and cranesbill has been doing really great there, so I think I'll get some more. I may try it in some drier places, too and see how it goes.

I agree, the roses are really encouraging to me, otherwise I think I'd be really discouraged and feel like giving up! haha. :)

Lavender Lass,
It's funny, but actually english lavender (hidcote) doesn't seem to do that well for me, but maybe I just didn't care for it properly. Though I have some dwarf english that seem to be recovering. Grosso lavender seems to do the best for me. I have been putting them in small raised berms, which helped a lot after my initial murdering of them all. haha.

I've tried some Spanish Lavender, but I dunno, it just doesn't seem to do that well and looks pretty ratty most of the time.

All my roses seem to be doing well, but I was surprised at how quickly Alchemist and Maman Cochet cl. got large. They're throwing out canes all over! I can't wait to see Alchemist bloom.

I appreciate all the suggestions and advice, you guys. I'm taking notes and will probably re-evaluate this fall, since it's probably a bad time to plant right now with the heat.

How about the soil on the camellia?
I've got a whole bunch of them- not as many as roses! But probably around 50. The first ones were plopped in the ground without ammendments cause I was a newbie. They thrived. The 2nd ones got carefully ammended soil. All but one died. Since then I haven't ammended at all, and the latest batches are doing just fine. My sister had the same problem. She put really good dirt around her house and then almost lost all of the camellias. She finally dug them out and put them in pure clay and now they are doing ok.
Probably that advice won't work for everyone, but the red clay soil around here grows really good camellias, gardenias, and crepe myrtles.

>My big camellia just keeps declining despite me repeatedly taking branches into the nursery and asking lots of questions. (I'm about ready to give up on it. This is just stupid. I shouldn't have to work THIS hard just to keep something from dying!) ;.....(

It can matter hugely what variety you are trying to grow, and in that context even just knowing what type of camellia it is can be very helpful. That said, I don't happen to know of any that will thrive in pure clay. I do know of some that will thrive in full sun, but most of the camellia japonica types won't be as happy with it as they would with something less than full sun. Some will take a lot of sun, however. It just all depends upon the variety.

We have clay soil here, but where we try to grow camellias, it has been hugely amended and has had the soil level raised to provide better drainage. Where that elevating wasn't done, they were mostly located on a slope so it wasn't the worst of circumstances. We've had some camellias die, and in hindsight and with more experience now, I'm pretty sure they were set up for a slow death by a soil PH that was too high.

In drought-prone years the soil PH can easily get too high by using light watering, as opposed to deep watering with good drainage. You might have your soil PH checked, or just assume now that it's too high and add some copper sulfate to it. And when you do water, water deeply. That can't make up for poor drainage, however.

One mistake many, perhaps even most, people make in planting camellias is to not loosen the edges of the roots out of the potting soil its roots have been used to growing in before planting. When those potting-soil roots hit a surrounding soil that has a different, perhaps much less ideal, texture, the roots sometimes grow around and around in the same old original soil instead of growing out into the larger amount of soil the plant will need as it continues to grow. If you don't loosen and gently tease outward the roots that were growing along its pot edges when planting a camellia, it can take a long time to die, but eventually it will likely die. The potential for this kind of death is especially high in heavy clay soils.

If that kind of slow death happens to be your problem, a solution would be to dig up the camellia (chose a cloudy day) and then gently loosen its roots, teasing them outward. Also making three fairly deep cuts with a knife toward the center of the root ball before replanting it can help with that. (And take advantage of its being temporarily out of the ground by replanting it into better-amended soil that is also more ideally elevated.)

If you continue to want to try growing camellias, consider getting a book. One we have is "Camellias: A Practical Gardening Guide" by Yvonne Cave, and Jim Rolfe. It has a ton of information for new growers. That one would be all you'd likely need, and it's not very expensive at Amazon. (If you end up really getting into camellias and want to know a lot about many varieties, a *wonderful* book is "Camellias: The Gardener's Encyclopedia" by Jennifer Trehane.)

In terms of varieties, camellias are like any other plant; some varieties are more disease-prone than others. Some seem to do well or pretty well, almost no matter what. I'd put two hiemalis camellias in that latter category: Shishigashira and Kanjiro. Both will do well in anything from full sun to mostly shade. We've had a Shishigashira in a far too shady location for maybe 20 years, and it blooms its head off every year, and survived some terrible droughts with less then ideal watering from us. Neglected (other than planting it in ideally prepared soil, leaf mulching, and never using any chemicals on it), it has always been extraordinarily healthy. Our nurseryman was looking around in our yard this spring and was amazed to see no tea scale on that hiemalis camellia and another nearby (sasanqua) camellia.

But you are worried about one particular camellia right now. Unfortunately, your local nurseryman isn't necessarily very knowledgeable in growing camellias; he/she likely just keeps them on hand a short while after purchasing them from the wholesale grower. So real help from your nurseryman isn't very likely unless he/she just happens to have a personal interest in camellias, enough to grow their own.

If you think your camellia is diseased but might be still savable, then I'd suggest visiting the experts at the forums of the Southeastern Camellia Society (www.camelliaweb.org). You can get real help there for a free signup. (They don't share the signup information you provide.) They'll likely want to see pictures, so try to go ahead and get some of the entire plant and some close-ups that show areas of damage. Be sure to supply the variety name and a clear description of your geographic location/climate and the particular growing conditions exactly where you have the plant sited in your yard, and all the details you can think of that might help. You don't have to live geographically close to their Savannah location for them to likely be able to spot what kind of damage your plant is experiencing now.

It's easy to overgeneralize some bad luck as a beginner with camellias into mistakenly thinking they're too hard to grow. (Guess how I know that???) I'd urge you to read up and get meaningful help before giving up on the idea of growing camellias. When camellias work, they work wonderfully well, and they are beautiful, beautiful, beautiful--365 days a year. You CAN grow them once you get past this learning curve, so please don't give up yet. Under the right growing conditions, many varieties are actually easy to grow.

Best wishes,
Mary

Here is a link that might be useful: Southeastern Camellia Society website

Thanks so much for the in depth response, Mary, Wow!

My large (dying) camellia is Marie Bracey. (japonica). When I planted it, I planted it according to the nursery instructions, which were to dig a large hole and amend the soil with half camellia/azalia soil mix and half of the existing clay. Usually my local nursery is pretty good about plants... but I know they can't possibly know about every plant.

I'm sure I need to do something to amend the ph some... I wonder if it would be better if it was planted a bit higher, in a berm or something. The other smaller camellia (Kramers Supreme Camellia) is near a drain, so I think it gets pretty good drainage there (and it's doing better than it's larger friend)

(by the way, I have three sasanqua (prostrate) camellias in the backyard and they seem to be doing ok.

Should I wait to see if the camellia recovers? (before checking it's roots or trying to replant?) I'm pretty sure the reason it was dying was because my irrigation system (by this camellia only, the rest of the system seems fine) has been broken for several weeks and I didn't know. I THOUGHT I was watering it deep/long about once a week, but actually, I wasn't watering it AT ALL. I just figured this out like yesterday...

what would IDEAL planting situation be? (ie what kind of soil amendments?)

It (Marie Bracey) has lost all of it's leaves. I clipped some of the outer branches and some of them were dead inside, but some are still green.

"Camellias: A Practical Gardening Guide"
I'll try and get that book, thankyou. Because I really love camellias, and I'd like to give it a shot. My grandmother grew them all the time,... plus, I just think they are beautiful and they bloom at a time of year when others don't.

Both Shishigashira and Kanjiro look really pretty to me. I appreciate the recommendation. If I put another one in, or have to replace one of my existing ones, I'll pick one of those. Less heartache would be nice. :)

>My large (dying) camellia is Marie Bracey. (japonica). When I planted it, I planted it according to the nursery instructions, which were to dig a large hole and amend the soil with half camellia/azalia soil mix and half of the existing clay. Usually my local nursery is pretty good about plants... but I know they can't possibly know about every plant.

That sounds really good to me, depending on what the camellia/azalea soil mix contains. At any rate, I'd seriously doubt that your soil mix is the basic problem. If the plant hasn't been watered, that's almost surely the problem, or a large part of it. (A stressed plant is more likely to come down with extra new problems too.)

We have 6 Marie Braceys (aka Spellbound) here! We kind of like that variety, I guess you might say. :D Two were large blooming plants new this winter. Three are about 7 years old and planted in far too much shade. They were very slow to get going from their original 1 or 2 gallon size but still are exceptionally healthy without any disease problems at all that I've noticed. They just began to bloom this year. And one has been planted maybe 18-20 years and is quite large and bushy, even though it is not ideally sited (less than ideal amounts of sunlight and competing with too many tree roots for moisture). This long-planted large camellia has survived all droughts without enough water, while some azaleas and rhododendrons right next to it died from the lack of water.

So Marie Bracey can for sure send its roots pretty deeply to make it through less than ideal rainfall/watering, but I'd guess that to have that happen takes either some luck with when heavy rain finally does fall--just in time--or a good watering strategy for encouraging deep roots. Just in time heavy rainfall is what must have happened here over several successive rainfalls. You can make use of a similar strategy with your own watering scheme by giving it successively slightly longer time spans between watering and making sure to water very deeply when you do water, so that as the water level falls, the roots are encouraged to grow deeper and deeper to get the moisture that's there.

Yours didn't quite get either kind of treatment, so its roots weren't deep into the soil and prepared for the long drought you accidentally gave it. It's likely a protective measure that your Marie Bracey has gone through recently to stop sending its scarce moisture to all branches, but just sending necessary moisture to some branches in an effort to keep some parts of the plant alive--a better thing than having the whole thing die at once.

You might look at it this way... The plant succeeded in what it was trying to do if any branches at all are still alive now. Hurrah! Just trim off those branches that died, and water the plant regularly and very well for a very long while to give it a chance to regain its strength, send out more roots, and look like a robust, leafy, healthy plant again. Eventually it would be a good idea to try the less-frequent deep watering strategy, though. Maybe wait until next spring or even the following spring to do that, depending on how long it takes for a full recovery? When you do get around to trying this, the roots will grow deeper looking for moisture and it ought to be better prepared to get through the summer heat with enough moisture to have a good bud set then. (It's amazingly how much better the bud set is when a camellia gets plenty of moisture when it is trying to set buds!)

Marie Bracey is an old variety that has stood the test of time. We've never had any problems of any kind with ours, and they have been mostly completely neglected. Once yours gets back to adequate moisture, it ought to recover unless it's really too far gone. Only time will tell on that, but it's such a healthy variety overall it's certainly worth giving it every chance now.

>I'm sure I need to do something to amend the ph some... I wonder if it would be better if it was planted a bit higher, in a berm or something. The other smaller camellia (Kramers Supreme Camellia) is near a drain, so I think it gets pretty good drainage there (and it's doing better than it's larger friend)

Berms are great, and they look wonderful too, adding a three-dimensional effect. For future landscape planning, that's a great strategy, and makes your yard much more interesting to look at.

I wouldn't rush to do anything about PH without getting a soil test done first, now that you know you've gotten a problem from the lack of water. Your PH might well need a little adjusting, but since you don't have other camellias dying in the same soil, there seems to be no big rush on perfecting PH.

>Should I wait to see if the camellia recovers?

Well, you know the old saying: "Don't fix what ain't broke!" Yes, wait! Just water. Don't fertilize. Don't spray anything near the plant, don't do anything except giving it water. If you have an easy way to provide a bit more dappled shade to some of the plant--a potted tree on its south side perhaps?--that wouldn't hurt either. If it were my plant, I'd give it until next March or April to show good signs of recovery before yanking it, unless its position is so prominent in your yard that you need that spot to look good again really soon.

You might eventually decide to relocate the plant or to raise it some within the planting hole--or decide not to. Just make sure that the plant has recovered first before giving it any new stresses to have to weather; it has lost some or potentially most of its roots now to the lack of water and recovery is going to take a good bit of time.

>what would IDEAL planting situation be? (ie what kind of soil amendments?)

I don't really know the answer to that, and I'm not sure anyone does. So much depends on what kind of soil you are dealing with to begin with. Your county extension agent might have an idea about that for your area. (Or not. It might depend on what kind of plants he/she knows best?)

It also depends on what components you have available in your area for a reasonable price, and what suits you. There is no single formula that is necessary for success. The general keys pointing toward the potential for good results with camellias, I think, are the combination's overall ability to drain reasonably well while holding a reasonable amount of moisture that still does have some aeration, the combination's overall acidity, and its overall proportion of organic materials (improves the chances for the first three, plus makes for lots of benefical soil microorganisms).

If you are curious as to what we do here, well... We buy a truckload of sandy loam soil here every now and then so we usually have that available to use for amending our hard clay into something more crumbly but that will still hold itself into a clump if you squeeze on it. We use a fair amount of sandy loam in a clay mixture that is heavy on organics. We also have composted leaves in abundance to use and we use them abundantly. And at times we get free delivered hardwood mulching materials, so we mix in a fair amount of that too. Sometimes pine needles and pine bark. Plus we scoop lots of fresh hardwood leaves into the mix (helps to hold the soil in place for heavy rains, including on our berms). And usually we add some cottonseed meal and sphagnum peat moss too. Often we push in some leafy twigs as a final step after the camellia is planted to help hold the soil and those break down very gradually and nicely. We don't throw in the kitchen sink, but almost. ;) We use some cow poo, alfalfa, and bonemeal with the roses, but not with camellias. If you want to use manure or very much bonemeal with camellias, be sure to do things to adjust the PH downward some because very much of that will likely raise the PH to something that's too high. We also have some greensand, but haven't gotten around to using that except on the roses (and not much there either). You might well have good luck with fewer organics than we use, but we've had good luck with what we do and are likely to keep doing it.

We never use commercial fertilizers of any kind anywhere in a planting hole or after a plant is planted. (Nor do we spray any inorganic chemicals of any kind. Camellias don't need themit to thrive and they all usually look somewhere between fabulously healthy to pretty good overall, even if they are not absolutely perfectly disease-free.) For fertilizing after planting, we use cottonseed meal, along with hardwood mulching and leaves that keep getting new layers added on top each year as the old layer decomposes.

We also have two Kramer's Supremes, another old favorite variety. One is a well-established plant (planted at the same time as the oldest Marie Bracey and far too close to a tree) that has never had any problems at all, but hasn't bloomed well until this spring--when it went wild! And was wildly beautiful! (Last summer it had lots of rainfall when trying to make buds.) This variety grows more upright than Marie Bracey does but is also a very beautiful plant. It gets huge pretty quickly. We also bought one more (large, 7-gallon) Kramer's Supreme last winter and it's sited in a much better spot, with adequate sunlight and no tree root competition. I can't wait to see what it looks like in future years there. You are going to like this variety too. I always hope for fragrance and it does have a bit, but it's fairly faint.

With as many camellias as you already do have growing successfully, you have more experience with camellias than I was assuming when writing earlier. I'd guess that you weren't even close to giving up on camellias, and probably thought my post a bit funny! Anyway, consider yourself REALLY encouraged now! :D

Fingers crossed here that your Marie Bracey makes it. It's easy to see why it's also called "Spellbound" as its blooms are so breathtakingly beautiful. But if this one is too far gone, don't hestitate to replace it with another of the same variety. It's a great variety that you'll love having in many good growing years ahead.

Best wishes,
Mary

Thanks Mary, I feel like I have a lot stronger understanding now instead of being in the dark.

Where does one get sandy loam soil anyway? I was figuring I might look for "amend" that someone else suggested. I think you can get it at home depot.

Right now I don't really have enough plants for long enough to have a big compost pile. When I cut stuff off, I just let it be and figure it will add to the mulch. But this helps a lot for me to get a picture of what I might do in the future. I've been using organic fertilizers on everything.

Don't worry about encouraging me "too much". I've only been growing them since like January, so I don't have much experience, even though I grew up around yards full of them. And even though the prostrate ones in the back are doing ok... when I first wrote my top post, I was about ready to give up on that Marie Bracey! Truly!

Because I THOUGHT I'd figured out what I was doing wrong (I'd been watering too frequently for too short a period.) So when I switched to less frequent deep waters, the Marie Bracey perked right up, so I was all "HUZZAH!"

but then after that the irrigation system broke and I didn't know it was broken... so I didnt understand at THAT point what I was doing wrong, and I got really discouraged. "I'm watering you deep like I was told, WHY ARE YOU DYING?" haha... *_*

I appreciate the feedback about Marie Bracey and Kramer's specifically, I picked them by accident... so it's nice to know that they are good varieties! :) I'm curious if there are other ones that you have that you like a lot (since you seem to have a lot!)

Here's a photo of my Marie Bracey this past March. It really is beautiful. I hope I can save it.
{{gwi:57272}}

>Where does one get sandy loam soil anyway? I was figuring I might look for "amend" that someone else suggested. I think you can get it at home depot.

Thanks very much for the lovely picture!

You'd have to call around to places that sell dirt by the truckload to potentially find some "sandyloam" soil in your area. I'm not familiar with "amend" at Home Depot, but maybe reading the contents on the bag would help you decide on its potential benefits there.

The camellias we have are largely influenced by what was available around here or through a nurseryman's contact with a particular wholesaler in looking for us from a list I supplied. They are probably no more outstanding than many others, but we've been quite pleased with those we have, other than Debutante (beautiful bloom, but buds often get killed by our winters here). Most of ours are camellia japonica types:

Marie Bracey/Spellbound, Kramer's Supreme, Lady Van Sittart (the white version with red stripes), Professor Sargent, Hugh Evans (weepy-formed sasanqua, but unlike most sasanquas is good for cutting with blooms that aren't prone to shattering, and it's noticeably fragrant), Shishigashira hiemalis, Kanjiro hiemalis, Cleopatra and 2 other sasanaqua varieties that are medium or lighter pink semidoubles (whose names I've forgotten--beautiful in the yard but the blooms shatter and don't cut well enough to bother bringing indoors), Nuccio's Jewel, Chandleri Elegans Variegated, Carter's Sunburst, Mrs. Charles Cobb, and two fragrant hybrids, Cinnamon Cindy and High Fragrance. Not enough--we need lots more!

If you really want to get lots of good camellia ideas, buy Jennifer Trehane's book. The pictures are gorgeous and the information invaluable; you'll want them all!

Best wishes,
Mary