Camellia problem

[David Nicholson]

My garden soil is fairly neutral but a Camellia in my front garden has gone very yellow-leaved on me even though, when I planted it, I replaced the natural soil around it with ericaceous compost. I can only assume that lime I used on some Irises in the same vicinity has leached into the compost around the Camellia. Today I moved it into a new peaty bed I'm establishing and gave it a good watering with sequestered iron. How long is it likely to take before I see some improvement please?

[David Nicholson]

........ and nobody answered!! Well it's looking a little better but a long way to go.

As I said my soil is neutral so I added a lot of peat and ericaceous compost to the bed I put the Camellia in and now I want to add some other plants too. On a recfent visit to Plant World I treated myself to a couple of autumn flowering Gentians. I intend to try a Cassiope, probably C. 'Edinburgh', and a Gaultheria. I would like to plant some bulbs too. What would it be best to try in this sort of soil?

[Giles]

..well, David, I'll break it to you gently....at best the new growth will be green, and in time the old yellow leaves will drop off....(sorry).

[Lesley Cox]

Yesterday I had a small splurge and bought a Camellia called 'Silver Column,' a sasanqua form and the only Camellia I have which isn't a clean species (oh no, I have 'Cornish Snow' but that's close to a species.) I bought it for the pre-winter flowering and the pure whiteness of it and the fragrance which is delicious. It will grow to about 1.5 metres according to the label. There are around 50 flowers and many more buds and there also appear to be some seed capsules. If so I'll grow them and see what happens.

I too may have a Camellia problem, as I have nowhere to plant it at present.