Featured Plant: October Magic® Carpet™ Camellia

Those Plant Ladies

November 2021

Every month, we love sharing some of our favorite plants that we love to enjoy during that time of year. It’s November here in North Carolina but we are so excited to feature the October Magic® Carpet™ Camellia this month. (Yeah, yeah, you can just ignore that it’s got October in the name!)

The November featured plant on the Those Plant Ladies blog: October Magic Carpet Camellia.

Quick Introduction to Camellias

Camellias are such great plants that provide a ton of value to our landscape at the times of year when not much else is showing up. They are evergreen and flower at the beginning or end of winter when everything else is practically dormant. While they can tolerate full sun, they do often like a little bit of shade protection in the hottest parts of the day. They are slow growers which often makes them easier to manage than those shrubs in your landscape that you find yourself pruning two and three times a year because they are growing so fast.

There are two types of camellias that are most commonly used in the southeast, the Japanese camellia (Camellia japonica) and the sasanqua camellia (Camellia sasanqua). They are pretty easy to tell apart once you know what to look for. Japanese camellias have fluffier flowers without obvious yellow stamen (long, thin, male flower parts) in the center. When these flowers fall off, they tend to fall off as whole flowers to the ground. Japanese camellias bloom in the mid-winter, say January through March, depending on the variety.

Sasanqua camellias typically have less petals on their flowers and have obvious yellow stamens present. When these flowers fall off, they tend to fall petal by petal which can really look like something from a fairy tale! Sasanqua camellias bloom in the late fall through early winter, October through December, depending on the variety.

Knowing this is November’s Featured Plant and it’s got October Magic in the name, you can probably guess that this is a sasanqua camellia! You can tell because of its late fall blooms!

October Magic® Carpet™ Camellia

This plant is one we have come across fairly recently and it has us really excited. Most camellias are pretty large for use in a typical home landscape. They can grow up to 6-8 feet tall and 6 feet wide and are not super tolerant of heavy pruning to reduce their size due to their slow growing nature. This can make them hard to manage and keep smaller after they mature in a landscape past 10 years old.

October Magic® Carpet™ Camellia is different! This is a low-lying sasanqua camellia that only reaches 3 feet tall and up to 5 feet wide. This is a totally manageable size for almost any landscape! We just can’t overstate how excited we are about a camellia that is available in that size and shape. It’s so cool! And this camellia, of course, brings all of the typical camellia goodness with it: off-season blooms in early winter, dark, evergreen leaves, and slow, manageable growth. It’s a win-win-win! Its ruffley flowers are a bold pink without being too bright or neon-feeling.

Don’t care for pink? Check out our post Landscape Plant Selection for the Neutral Plant Lady

Check out the growing requirement specifics below and be sure to consider this shrub when looking to add interest to your landscape for early winter!

Sunlight: Full sun or Part Shade
Soil: Average, well-drained soil
Water: water through establishment; should be fairly drought tolerant but may require a little extra water in extreme drought for best flowering.
Maintenance: Prune after flowering when necessary to maintain shape and size desired and clean-up broken or dead branches
Hardiness Zone: 7-9
Bloom Time: Late Fall to Early Winter
Size: 3 feet tall and 5 feet wide
Landscape Uses: Foundation plantings in part shade yards, hedges, borders, accent plantings