This garden boasts a winter wonderland of blooms — one named after UGA legend
MARSHALLVILLE — This time of year in the land of Georgia’s renowned peach trees just below the Peach County line, the camellia trees take center stage.
More than 1,000 varieties of the shrublike evergreens cloud the roughly 9-acre tract at Massee Lane Gardens with color — all manner of reds, pinks, whites.
On Saturday at the Festival of Camellias, the 80th rendition of the annual monthlong homage to the cold-weather bloomers, devotees from all over visited the pine-shaded garden that nearly a century ago sprang forth thanks to a wind-felled pecan tree.
David Coleman “Dave” Strother, a cottonseed oil broker and farmer who died in 1970 at 88, donated nearly 140 acres to the American Camellia Society. He had helped found the society in Macon in 1945. In the late 1960s, the society built its headquarters here.
Strother acquired the property in 1918 as a cotton and peach farm. In a 1957 interview in the Macon Telegraph, Strother cited the red and pink camellias as his favorites. He said he preferred those “with sheen … with sparkle.”
Strother planted his first camellia in 1936. It bloomed and, soon enough, promptly died. But he was undeterred and had by then, having developed a fondness for camellias, planted scores more.
“He already had the camellia bug,” said William Khoury, now superintendent of the gardens.
Khoury said camellias’ allure stems largely from their wintertime blooms, which boast thick, palm-size flowers.
“When nothing else is really going on,” Khoury said of the cold-season starlets, “they’re sitting there putting on a show.”
And, he said, “compared to a rose, they’re a piece of cake to take care of.”
The recent snap of subfreezing weather burned some of the trees’ open blooms.
“But they’ve really bounced back well,” Khoury said.
Strolls along the brick paths that crisscross the grounds here in the countryside between the Flint River and I-75 lend visitors an instant tranquility.
“Regulars just come for the peace,” Khoury said.
One local who frequents the grounds uses the trees as a backdrop for her TikTok videos.
On Saturday, a guest from South Carolina said she had read about the camellia garden in Middle Georgia and decided to drop by on her way to Alabama.
The guest, Susan Lyons, a member of the Coastal Carolina Camellia Society in Charleston, said the trees are captivating.
“Every one you look at is more beautiful than the next,” Lyons said. “I don’t know all that much about camellias. So I think this is a great place to come and see and learn. … There are lots of unusual ones that you don’t see everywhere.”
Speaking of which, Khoury, the garden’s superintendent, led another visitor to one of the spread’s more prominent plants.
He wound his way into the trees toward a greenhouse.
Inside, sharing space with a dozen or so other cultivars, stood one “Vince Dooley.”
Dooley, the legendary University of Georgia football coach, was a renowned gardener and camellia lover himself.
His tree, a cultivar propagated by a Macon man, was officially registered in 2004, 18 years before Dooley’s death.
On Saturday, Dooley’s tree was in full, hefty bloom, with golden stamens and hot-pink filaments.
Its petals beamed scarlet red.
Or, as Khoury noted, “Bulldog red.”
About the Author
Joe Kovac Jr. is Macon bureau chief covering Middle Georgia for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
