Camellia sasanqua Setsugekka

Camellia sasanqua 'Setsugekka' is a generous, luxuriant, highly fragrant autumn camellia with a very elegant semi-weeping habit, adorned with frizzy and luminous blooms. This variety produces semi-double white flowers, particularly large for the species, with wavy and frizzy petals surrounding a golden heart. They are so abundant in autumn that they weigh down its flexible branches,  every year creating a magical and timeless spectacle at a point when the days are shortest. Its foliage, thin, dark green and glossy, adds elegance to the background of flower beds. It is robust and able to adapt to windy or sunny sites, but it requires a lime-free soil that is cool in summer. A versatile variety, with natural charm, that can be trained against a wall, planted as a free hedge, or grown in a very large pot, regardless of the style of the garden.

The 'Setsugekka' camellia, very popular in Australia, is one of many hybrids derived from the Camellia sasanqua species, which belongs to the Theaceae family. This plant forms a bush with a simultaneously upright, flexible and slightly weeping habit that is adaptable to being trained or left to grow freely. Its vigorous growth is quite fast, allowing it to reach 1.30 m (4 ft) in height and 1 m (3 feet 4 inches) in width in 10 years. Its mature size can reach 2 to 2.30 meters (6-7 ft), or even more in favourable conditions. Flowering, long and abundant for an autumn camellia, takes place from October to January. This very generous shrub continuously produces very large flowers 10 cm (4 in) wide, with a powerful fragrance, formed by a corolla of wavy white petals on which rests a second row of smaller petals around very visible golden yellow stamens. Blooms are short-lived but continually renew themselves on the plant, leaving a carpet of petals on the ground like cherry trees in Japan. The dense and evergreen foliage is composed of small, dark green, shiny, ovate and tough, toothed leaves, paler on the undersides.

Suited to humid oceanic climates and non-chalky soils, Camellia x sasanqua 'Setsugekka' tolerates sun and windy conditions better than other camellias. It performs better in mild climates than in cold regions, where its hardiness can be lacking and its flowering compromised. Wherever winters are not too harsh it can be installed in the garden as a standalone plant, or combined with other acid-loving plants (Rhododendron, azaleas, Hydrangea, Hamamelis) in a flowering hedge. The 'Setsugekka' camellia deserves a prominent location at the entrance to the garden or house, or alongside a pathway. You can also adorn its base with autumn bulbs such as colchicums or Naples cyclamens. In cold regions it can be planted with caution on a balcony or terrace, to be brought indoors to an unheated conservatory or cold greenhouse during the flowering period.