The Camellias of Bon Air - A guest post by Jenny Sullivan

A great place to be on a chilly April morning is Bon Air Park on Wilson Boulevard in Arlington, Virginia. Its claim to fame is its magnificent rose garden, which is lavish and has quite a history. But that is for another time. In April, it is good to take your cup of coffee to the park at about 7 in the morning and head for the path that I call Camellia Alley.

      All along the way, as you climb the rise, then crest the hill, and make your way down the other side to the little park road, you will find variety after variety of Camellia japonica. As the name reveals, Camellia japonica originated in Japan where, according to the American Camellia Society, they are called Tsubaki, which translates as “tree with shining leaves.” They came first to England with tea, of course, brought by the East India Company. Now there are believed to be 20,000 varieties worldwide, 200 known in this country.  Linnaeus gave the plant the name that we use in the West, Camellia, to honor a Jesuit priest serving in the Philippines, Joseph Kamel.

      In Bon Air Park in the early morning, the slant of the sunlight on the buds and blooms and the drops of dew catching that sunlight combine to create a sight that is at once simple and sweet yet grand and elegant. It is a tough decision whether to stop and gaze at exquisite individual flowers for one breathtaking effect or to stand back and be stunned by the profusion of blooms on the profusion of bushes for another breathtaking effect.  Either way, it is impossible not to have a grateful heart for the splendor of creation.

       As beautiful as camellia bushes are in the garden of a well-tended yard, when they line a nature walk and imitate the look of a wild hedgerow, as they do at Bon Air, they are even more special. When I was a little girl, I had an Alice in Wonderland book with beautiful illustrations. I loved the page with the picture of the well-tended garden of the Queen of Hearts. I know that her painted flowers were supposed to be roses, but they looked like camellias to me. (Camellias used to be commonly referred to as “camellia roses.”) The flowers on the Queen’s bushes in the picture in my book looked like the camellias in our neighbor’s yard—and like some of the camellias at Bon Air, for example this one.

      It is said that the Japanese do not use Camellias as cut flowers because, instead of the petals falling off one by one, often the whole head falls off intact. They consider that morbid. I think it is wonderful. The path is strewn at Bon Air with perfect examples under your feet of blooms just like the ones on the branches above, botanical gems scattered along the way.

The camellia in my yard blooms from January through March. What a terrific gift in winter to have those flowers. Because of the hybridizing of camellias, there’s one blooming somewhere at all times through the year. They are all colors, all sizes, all heights. In short, there is a camellia for everyone. And the camellias at Bon Air Park are something no one who can get there should miss.

Jenny Sullivan became a garden club member here in Northern Virginia, after retiring from 42 years of teaching English.  She has authored two books in retirement, From My Father’s House, a southern novel click FMI here and The Purpose-Driven Life: A Children’s Catechism click FMI .  Jenny will be teaching a course on Flannery O’Connor in the spring for Arlington County’s Encore Learning Program for Seniors.

Mother's Marigolds - A Guest post by Jenny Sullivan

When we have a break in the weather, a touch of warmth in the middle of the bitter cold of January or February, I retrieve from my garage the shoe box where I store flower seeds. At my kitchen table I lay the packets out like an array of gorgeous photographs spread out on a magazine editor’s desk, photos the editor must somehow choose from among to decide which will be published.  My yard has room for only about 10% of the seeds that lie before me. I admire the envelopes of new seeds with their handsome pictures of purple delphinium, mixed dahlias, orange butterfly weed. I peek into the brown bags of my harvested seeds with the dried heads of straw flowers, daisies, and Echinacea and pretend that I could plant them all in my half acre yard. I can’t. But every year, the seeds from Mother’s marigolds make the cut.

I never travelled home from a visit to my parents in Norfolk in the summer that Dad didn’t ask me, “Don’t you want to take back some tomatoes and cucumbers?” Certainly I did. And if the marigolds were just coming up, Mother sent me home with sprouts carefully set into a Tupperware container of dirt for transport.  If the season was nearing the end, I was welcome to deadhead the plants for seeds. No reasonable person would have turned down the offer. Just look at those marigolds.

      Although I like the marigolds mainly because Mother got me started, that is not all they have going for them. The variety in my yard, Tegetes patula, is just so pretty. They’re not elegant and beautiful like calla lilies or gladioli, but no flowers could be more “just plain pretty.” Their curly petals with their brilliant golds and oranges just shy of red are packed onto the heads. Their deep green leaves are so dense that they form a ground cover. Where there are no leaves and flowers, there are buds-- all summer long. Everything about marigolds screams vigor and abundance.

     They have a sweet peppery smell, almost like carnations. Carnations are perhaps making a comeback after years of being held in disdain by floral elites and effetes. But when I was a teenager, every year on the Saturday before Easter, Turpin’s flower shop truck would pull up to our house in the late afternoon with carnation corsages from my father for my mother, my big sister, and me. I sat in church on Easter Sunday with my nose buried in that corsage perched up at my shoulder and swooned over that pungent fragrance. The scent of the marigolds in my garden always takes me back there.

     And marigolds are so easy to grow. Give them some decent soil and decent sunlight, and they will grow for you. Give them better soil and full sunlight, and they will reward you with glorious profusion. The seeds are easy to harvest, and the plants self-seed like crazy, unless you live on a hill and all the seeds wash away in the rain.

     I have never spent any money on marigolds. Mine, of course, came from my mother’s yard, about 20 years ago! These same marigolds have yielded seeds that have gone to friends all over northern Virginia and are the reason the rectory garden at my church looks so good even after the lilies, Russian sage, and phlox behind the marigolds have faded.  I have a picture of myself baking my fruitcakes around Thanksgiving time, and bright, fresh, happy marigolds adorn my kitchen table—in November! I have spent not a dime nursing my marigolds. No pests or diseases have ever attacked them. In fact, people use marigolds in their vegetable gardens to repel little buggers and nematodes that would go after the tomatoes and strawberries on the surface and underground.

     Marigolds are trending these days because of all the uses of them in medicine and cooking. They are said to be good for treating skin rashes, abrasions, and insect bites.  Organically grown, they can serve as a poor man’s saffron and enhance soups and salads. But who cares? All a marigold needs to do is be pretty. That is why my mother loved them. That is why she wanted me to have the beauty of them. And that is why I will grow them every summer as long as I am flexible enough to bend down and scatter the seeds.


Jenny Sullivan became a garden club member here in Northern Virginia, after retiring from 42 years of teaching English.  She has authored two books in retirement, From My Father’s House, a southern novel click FMI and The Purpose-Driven Life: A Children’s Catechism click FMI.  Jenny will be teaching a course on Flannery O’Connor in the spring for Arlington County’s Encore Learning Program for Seniors.