It has been a trying season for the beautiful camellias at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens. First the 1,000-year floods of October and then an unseasonably warm December, followed by consecutive nights of below freezing temperatures have posed challenges for the famous gardens that always explode with bright hues of pink, red, yellow, and white during the cooler months when most flowers are dormant.
“When you get as much rain as we did that spell back in October — when everything is under water — it definitely had an effect on the camellias and azaleas and a lot of other things too,” says Miles Beach, director of Magnolia’s camellia collection. “Then when you get three days of real hard cold weather like we just had, it can wipe out everything.”
Beach said the storms were essentially a hurricane without the wind. “I can’t remember in my lifetime when we’ve had that much rain constantly and for as long as it was.” He explains that Magnolia is built on a phosphate plateau, making draining a real problem. He says that the had one or two fairly large oaks and a magnolia come down. The residual moisture damage combined with the recent consecutive freezing nights and it’s been a tough year for the gardens.
Luckily, while the camellias took a hit, there are still plenty of flowers on the trees and hopefully more to come before the season is over and the cold weather flowers give way to the abundance of spring flora. The gardens at Magnolia Plantation, which are of such beauty and variety that they have brought tourists from around the world to view them since they were open to the public in the early 1870s. However, many parts of the gardens are much older, some sections more than 325 years old, making them the oldest unrestored gardens in America.
Additionally, Magnolia is the last large scale “Romantic Gardens” left in the United States. The Romantic Garden movement has its roots in the industrial revolution in Europe, and is tied directly to the empowerment of the common man. When he went to work in the factories, he wanted to design gardens that would help him forget the dreary life offered during the workday. A good definition of a romantic garden is an “Extravagant Liar.” Truly, this is what a romantic garden is designed to do, to “lie” you into forgetting the normality of everyday life.
“They are a different style of garden, but this is the style I personally prefer,” says Tom Johnson, Director of Gardens at Magnolia. “I never cared for a garden that resembled little tin soldiers in a row. A Romantic Garden is the style I envision Eden would have been.”
As the plantation has stayed within the ownership of the same family for more than three centuries, each generation has added their own personal touch to the gardens, expanding and adding to its variety. Today there are various varieties of flowers from camellias, daffodils, to azaleas and countless other species in bloom year round.
In the cooler months camellias are king at Magnolia, which is one of only five gardens in the United States and only 30 gardens in the world that has received the prestigious International Camellia Garden of Excellence award from the International Camellia Society. The Society has recognized Magnolia as being a preeminent romantic garden where visitors can explore and enjoy the largest camellia collection in the United States.
Magnolia’s camellia collection contains more than 20,000 camellias, including 6,500 sasanquas, the country’s largest heirloom camellia collection and a hybrid collection of reticulates and other hybrids. Beach says Magnolia is also home to some cold weather camellias that can handle cold weather. While not as pretty as the southern camellias, these hardy varieties can be found as far north as Toronto, New Jersey, and Delaware.
Unfortunately, Beach says that due to the recent cold snap, as much as 50 percent of the blooms have dropped at Magnolia in the last week. “When you look at a limb of a camellia — or any tree — you have a layer of bark. Then you have a layer called the cambium below the bark, that’s what the plant uses to survive. It’s what the plant uses to transfer energy to the plant and to the root. It is the wettest part of the plant.  When you get real cold weather, it will expand and kill the buds,” says Beach. “But we still have a lot of stuff out there. And if we get some good weather and catch some rain, it’ll be fine.”
While this year’s bloom is a little “climatically challenged,” there’s still plenty of beauty in bloom this winter at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens, which is offering half-off admission through the end of January. Just visit www.magnoliaplantation.com and follow the instructions to print off your half-off coupon.
Magnolia Plantation is located at 3550 Ashley River Road. For more information, visit www.magnoliaplantation.com.
 

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