With their lovely waxen blooms, camellias are the glamorous stars of the spring garden. Borde Hill in West Sussex is home to a historic collection, and head of horticulture Harry Baldwin has a range of spectacular specimens to recommend
WORDS CLARE FOGGETT PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS
It was a stroke of luck that Colonel Stephenson Robert Clarke married Edith Gertrude Godman, who counted among her relatives the galanthophile and plant collector Henry Elwes of Colesbourne Park. When ‘Stephie’ Clarke and Edith moved into their new home, Borde Hill in Sussex, in 1893, Stephie focused “at first on making it a family home and then on the wider landscape”, says Borde Hill’s current head of horticulture, Harry Baldwin. But some ten years in, encouraged by Elwes, the Colonel began to turn his attention to the garden. “He wasn’t interested in plants at first. He loved natural history and ornithology, but you can see from the letters between them that Elwes really encouraged him to start collecting trees, and that’s how the collection here began,” says Harry. Soon the Colonel was subscribing to the plant collecting expeditions of George Forrest, Ernest Wilson, Frank Kingdon-Ward and Reginald Farrer, and the Borde Hill garden began to fill with all the exciting plants these prolific plant hunters brought home.
The ever-increasing collection of plants from around the world required a good head gardener, and there was a second stroke of luck when Stephie employed Walter Fleming in 1928. A taciturn Scot, and a “highly intelligent, likeable man” according to a note in the Borde Hill archive from Collingwood ‘Cherry’ Ingram, Fleming had a flair for hybridising. He bred new alstroemeria and camellias, which is how Borde Hill came to be the birthplace of one of the most widely grown and famous camellias today: Camellia x williamsii ‘Donation’.
You don’t have to be a camellia expert to have heard of this cracking cultivar. Straight after its introduction in 1937-38, its excellent garden worthiness was recognised with an Award of Garden Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society. Its compact, upright growth coupled with semi-double blooms in orchid pink makes it a highlight of early spring in gardens. Fleming crossed Camellia saluenensis with C. japonica ‘Donckelaeri’ to create the new plant. “It has such good parentage,” says Harry. “C. japonica is quite hardy, while C. saluenensis isn��
