Monica, there is a forum here at gardenweb dedicated to camellia's. Do go over and ask your Q there and I'm sure someone will be able to help you. Give them as much info as you can, such as where you live and how cold does it get in your climate? (I assume you're growing your camellia outdoors) What kind of camellia is it and how long have you had it? Spare no details. Good luck. Here is a link that might be useful: Camellia's

Just keep doing water changes to keep the water from going bad and it might work, this is the same way I've rescued numerous species, but it's really all up to the plant itself... Lot's of people say you'll need expensive setups for hydroculture but with a little extra work what you're doing is exactly the same. This will be the least stressful for the plant and encourage it to grow new roots. Give it a couple weeks and if it doesn't start growing there might be nothing you can do. :( I've never worked with this particular plant but I've rescued and kept roses, numerous herbs, some succulents, coleus, Devils Ivy, and lots of random wildflowers this way so it should work just as well as it does with your other houseplants. You mentioned keeping them in just water, I do the same with all of mine and use tea as fertilizer. I just soak a teabag for a few minutes and then squeeze it into the plants vase putting enough tea in to tint the water brown. p.s... where did you get those vases? My roses are outgrowing everything I put them in and I was looking for something like what you have pictured :3

I've grown Camellias in pots for years, a couple have been happy in the same pot for a decade, but I switch out the soil and check the root system every year or two. What growers grow in nowadays is the cheapest junk the plants will tolerate. Try repotting in a quality acid mix and when the weather cools down in fall give a few very diluted hits of acid fertilizer. Give the plant full shade for a few weeks to recover. Keep moderately moist at all times but never soggy. Make sure the pot has an AIRY fluffy mulch that does not compress. Do not replant deeper than the original level. Camellia root systems want air but at the same time constant moisture and cool temperatures. They will either dry out or suffocate. You have to walk that line between the two. If you can do that they will be happy, as they don't need much besides a cool, protected root system. Being an understory plant, they must survive despite being in soil robbed of most nutrients and water by larger trees. Make sure the roots are shaded. If you take care of their small, sensitive root system, the rest of the plant takes care of itself.

Thanks for the reply! :) I'm on a very inflexible budget and doing all the manual labour myself - DH is off training for five months and so it really is just wimpy, I-hate-manual-labour me doing all of this. I'd love to turn the acre of lawn - aka weedy patches interspersed with bare patches with the occasional brave little fescue blade popping out - into a shady cottage garden with garden rooms and winding paths. That's not going to happen anytime soon. I'm planning on putting in some budget buy trees this autumn - celtis sinensis (chinese hackberry) - to substitute for one of my favourite SA natives - celtis africanus, acer buergeranum, taxodium distichum, dawn cedar (forget the latin name) and some red maples. Hopefully those will give me shade around the house (and not at the very back against the woods) in 10 or so years' time. Oh, and someone gave me a chinese parasol tree seeding over the weekend, so that'll be going into the ground too. In the mean time, I am putting in a bed against the driveway and the walkway. The intent is to at least break up some of the straight lines created by siding/bricked steps and a very boring entrance. If I wait until the weather conditions are ideal (ie the drought is over), I may wait forever, so things are going in under the best conditions I can create - an amended bed (I have the compost and pinebark soil conditioner waiting) and an irrigation system I will install. Plants going into that bed are the trident maple (a. buergeranum), a witch hazel, three "Becky" shasta daisies, some asters, a couple of "Moonbeam" coreopsis, "Rozanne" geranium, a gaura and a salvia. I would also like to fit in two flowering quinces. The bed is east, and starts getting shade in the early afternoon. It will be expanded as means and time allow. The bed is a quarter circle with the radii each about 14 feet long - the radii being the edge of the driveway and the edge of the walkway to the front entrance. That's what's being planted this year. The butterfly bush was kind of an accident. I ended up with a large hole in the middle of the lawn (I use the word loosely) towards the woods when I removed a large piece of discarded metal from the ground in July. DH said to just fill in the hole, but as far as I'm concerned, premade holes in North Carolina clay are gifts from the gardening fairies and not to be neglected. Thus the butterfly bush - because it's a dry, neglected corner of the garden and needed to cope with lots of sun. Except now that the days are getting a little shorter, I've realised that oops! that's spot's not going to be quite so sunny in December and thus my worry about sunlight and plant dormancy. Incidentally, despite being planted into the ground in the heat of summer (late July) and receiving almost no rain and only the occasional soak from me (twice since it was planted), the butterfly bush is doing very well. It hasn't grown huge, but it's about doubled in size and put out several pretty spikes - none very large, but each one larger than the previous. Plants on my "lust list" are amelanchier (serviceberry), sambucus (elderberry), abelia, wintersweet, flax, oaks, pyracantha. I have others, but don't remember them offhand. And just can't do anything about it at the moment. As for the north side of the house, even though I asked about it, that won't have anything happen for a while. I was asking so that I can start planning mentally what I'd like to do. I appreciate your time and expertise in answering me. I hate feeling like I'm lost. Nik