Camellia Club is slice of Pensacola history. Annual show features 2,000 reasons why.
The Pensacola Camellia Club isn’t your grandmother’s flower club. It’s your grandfather's.
Founded in 1937 as the Pensacola Men’s Camellia Society, the group will stage its “84th Annual Camellia Club Show and Plant Sale” where several dozen exhibiters will show off their latest blooms.
“It’s a big competition,” said Paul Bruno, who’s served as the club’s president for two terms. “But it’s also a show for the public at no charge to come see the beauty of the camellias. You might see up to 2,000 flowers that day.”
The field will be divided into four divisions with 25 classes, a tete-a tete competition from Best of Show to individual varieties and species. The show is Dec. 10 at the Jean and Paul Amos Performance Studio, 1000 College Blvd. Bruno was introduced to the club in 2002. He can still vouch enthusiastically for the appeal of what is sometimes dubbed, “The Winter Rose.”
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“I went to a show and I was hooked,” Bruno recalled. “I walked in and there were 2,500 blooms (and) all these fantastic shapes and colors.”
The annual Camellia Show is probably the oldest public event in town. On top of that, the club is the oldest of its kind in the U.S.
“It’s a slice of Pensacola history,” Bruno declared.
The club appears regularly at Palafox Market and at several other venues throughout the year like the recent “St. Christopher’s Caravan.”
“We grow and sell plants, which gives us our income to put on activities for the general public,” said Bruno.
The organization’s original moniker is an imprimatur of its age. Conventionally, women circulated at garden clubs while men concentrated on grafting new species of plants and trees.
“One guy would get an expensive plant and then take a clipping and graft it onto another, so you had a new exotic plant,” said Bruno. “These guys were all in it together.”
Slowly, the Pensacola Men’s Camellia Society became co-ed, but it didn’t put the ring on until 1989 when it renamed itself as The Pensacola Camellia Club. Along the way, it drew attention in the camellia community and was chosen to host the National American Camellia Society’s annual convention in 1975, which attracted 10,000 visitors. It hosted it again in 2013.
Bruno described camellias as “a cheap addiction” and “loads of fun.” But for those outside the club, what exactly is the fuss all about?
“For us, it’s that they bloom in the winter,” said Bruno. “Whenever everything else is shriveled up and brown, you have this beautiful flower in the dead of winter blooming. And that’s a pretty nice thing.”
Camellia blooms also enjoy a lengthy season from mid-October to as long as early April. Azaleas, another Southern botanical staple, bloom in late winter for a few weeks on evergreen bushes. They present in several colors and look similar, but camellias boast over 40,000 varieties. Originally from China and Japan, the camellia’s U.S. territory is confined to the southeast from the Carolinas to central Florida.
“The ones people are most familiar with are the sasanqua, japonica, and the big show flowers, reticulatas,” Bruno explained.
Camellias are also revered for their adaptability to sandy soil and rapid weather changes.
“They can grow up to 30 feet tall and live over 200 years,” Bruno continued. “Once they get established, they’re bullet-proof. They’ll last a long, long time. They hold up pretty well without much care.”
About 50 members convened for the club’s last monthly meeting on a chilly November night at the Pensacola Garden Center in East Hill. Within its ranks are mostly longtime admirers or backyard growers. Years ago, Skip Vogelsang planted a few camellias with his wife on their property. She saw an advertisement about the club’s annual show, but he wasn’t very interested at first.
“I ended up walking in,” said Vogelsang. “I was just flabbergasted. Long story short, I went from three to 250 camellias.”
John Davy, a wholesale tree farmer in Santa Rosa County, led a program at the meeting titled, “Sasanqua and other Species.”
“I joined (the club) in 1975,” said Davy. “I was active for a long time, then I started a business, got married, had a family, and it kind of slipped away and then came back.”
Like most camellia enthusiasts, Davy was a hobby grower. He was also influenced by his father, a wheat farmer who grew flowers on the side. During a record freeze one winter, Davy noticed the camellia blooms survived the cold.
“I’m growing the wrong thing,” he remembered saying.
Davy has succeeded in creating new varieties, most notably the “Daddy Mac 2008.” The process is a test of patience and left to chance, as a plant takes eight to 10 years to mature. Rather than growing from seed, the ideal way to propagate is through grafting, literally joining two plants. Of the thousands of varieties that have been documented, about 125 of them have been spawned in the Pensacola area with names like “Lady Laura,” “Amy Doodle,” and “Raspberry Sherbet.” It takes a panel of three independent judges to verify an applicant and the plant has to be capable of reproduction before it is registered.
While camellias are arguably the signature flower of the South, the Pensacola Camellia Club has wilted a bit. Its membership has “aged out” over the years. As growing and arranging flowers tends to be the purview of the retired, the club must graft itself to subsequent generations. To that end, a permanent camellia garden was established on the University of West Florida campus in 2007. A joint effort between the club and the UWF Retired Employee Association, the garden contains 300 plants with walkways and benches for easy public access. The majority of the Pensacola-based varieties are on site and 100 more plants are planned for the future.
As for the present, the Pensacola Camellia Club is wide open to new growth. Its annual membership dues are just $10, and its monthly meetings are informative assemblies for a common interest that is just as specific as it is universal. In the end, though, it may just come down to the aesthetic appeal of a resilient flower that blooms during Thanksgiving, Christmas, Mardi Gras, and sometimes, Easter.
“These camellias will turn your soul up,” said Ken Marlin, a member for about 10 years. “Just look at them. They’re perfection. They’re something else.”
84th Annual Camellia Show
When: 1 to 4 p.m., Dec. 10
Where: Jean and Paul Amos Auditorium, 1000 College Blvd.
Cost: Free admission
More information: pensacolacamelliaclub.com
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Camellia Club show and plant sale Dec. 10 features 2,000 flowers
