Ask the Expert: Fairy Magnolias^® – the new photinia or camellia for warm climates?

The following guest post comes from Kay Phelps, production manager at Clinton Nurseries of Florida, the Havana, Florida location of Clinton Nurseries, a regional wholesale grower of perennial and ornamental nursery stock. Here, Kay answers a few questions about Fairy Magnolia^® Blush, the first in the long-awaited Fairy Magnolias michelia hybrid series by renowned New Zealand breeder Mark Jury.

Kay Phelps with Fairy Magnolias

What are Fairy Magnolias?

Mostly grown as a thick hedge, this upright, compact and bushy plant tops out at 9 to 12 feet tall by 8 to 9 feet wide. Fairy Magnolia Blush has large, glossy, dark green leaves with dark chocolate, silky, shiny flower buds through the winter months. Then, with the first signs of spring, it gradually blooms into a blast of sweet, aromatic, pink- to blush-pink blooms. It’s not your typical grandmother’s “banana shrub” (a common name used for these types of magnolias). The blooms are not the half-inch sized bloom …. more like 2 ½  inches! (More information can be found here, on Tesselaar’s Fairy Magnolias fact sheet.)

Fairy Magnolia Blush close-up (left) and as a hedge (right)

What do you like about Fairy Magnolias?

They make a great flowering hedge or screening plant with spectacular blooming from February through May. They also have few, if any, pests and are extremely low maintenance (no maintenance, really, if you’re not concerned with height).  In Zones 7b through 11, they can be grown as an evergreen specimen plant, perhaps trained into a tree or even an espalier (see photo below). In Zone 7, they’ll serve as semi-deciduous shrubs.

Fairy Magnolia Blush as an espalier

How did you decide to grow Fairy Magnolias?

Back in 2007, after years of breeding and extensive trials, Tesselaar Plants was ready to make a new michelia hybrid available to the United States market.  As a licensed Tesselaar grower, we here at Clinton were asked if we would be willing to serve as the nursery to handle the initial production of Michelia Jury 01 for the US.  (The plant is now known as Fairy Magnolia Blush.)  I was very excited about this stunning, new, soon-to-be-released plant. I felt  it would be a great hit here in the US and was very glad to have been selected to handle the production management.

We now provide Fairy Magnolia Blush to other licensed Tesselaar growers who service garden centers in Zones 7 -11.  We also sell to our own Clinton wholesale customers in those warmer zones.

I’m very excited about new breeding and trials that are currently underway here for new Jury michelias that may be available in a few years’ time.

Fairy Magnolia Blush on site at Clinton Nurseries in Florida

What are people saying about it?

Customers have been raving not only about the beauty of the flower itself, but the fact that it’s fragrant, too. That’s something that’s very desirable, yet elusive in today’s gardening plants. People also love that it’s a flowering bush – a blooming powerhouse at that, with a bloom at every leaf axil. And they particularly appreciate the fact that it grows into such a thick, bushy hedge in such little time, with lush, evergreen foliage – right to the bottom – year round.

Fairy Magnolia Blush at Tesselaar's trial site in Silvan, Australia

Some people have remarked that Fairy Magnolias will come to replace photinias and/or camellias. Your thoughts?

I would think it would be a much better substitution for the photinia hedge.  It won’t have the fabraea problems (a terrible leaf spot disease that attacks closely spaced photinia). However, I would still recommend spacing Fairy Magnolia plants no closer than 8 feet apart. This ensures a more healthy plant and much showier stage of bloom. As for replacing camellias, I don’t believe in replacing one of the beauties that God has created. I see it rather as a new companion to the garden.

Photinia hedge

 Camellias

How and when can people get Fairy Magnolias?

They’re available this year to retailers in Zones 7b through 11.