Zoom Culture: Saving Tsubaki for Australia – the conservation activities of Camellia Ark Australia

Tsubaki (椿) and Sazanka (山茶花) have been part of Japanese horticultural practice for over a thousand years, culminating in recognition of many cultivars particularly during the Edo Period. Our Zoom talk with Dr Stephen Utick, co-founder and Secretary of Camellia Ark Australia, will provide some historical background to camellias and describe the activities of Camellia Ark Australia. 

As a former Commonwealth science policy officer and now retired, Dr Utick is a globally recognised Australian expert on camellias in garden history. He has helped develop a fabulous collection at Tsubakiyama in the Blue Mountains Botanic Garden, and is an honorary Visiting Curator of Theaceae at the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney. He currently serves as a Vice President of the International Camellia Society (ICS), and was awarded the ICS President’s Medal in 2020, the E.G. Waterhouse Medal from Camellias Australia in 2023, and the Walter Hazlewood Medal in 2014.

From the 1960s onwards, coinciding with an interest in ikebana, bonsai and Japanese style gardens, Australia was able to import many Japanese camellia cultivars. Stricter biosecurity requirements implemented around the year 2000 prohibited the importation of camellia woody cutting or root material. By then, Australian gardens and collections possessed a wide range of extremely rare or at least uncommon tsubaki cultivars, all of which will be lost over time unless propagated for conservation.

Dr Utick will outline the approach of Camellia Ark Australia to conserving such rare camellia cultivars. He will also showcase a range of rare tsubaki being conserved through his group's activities. He welcomes support from the Australia-Japan Society in finding suitable gardens to place some of these, thus ensuring that Australia does not lose this beautiful horticultural connection with Japanese garden culture.