fairy magnolia blush

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.

Today’s guest blogger is Abbie Jury (at right), a garden writer whose husband Mark Jury, bred the new Fairy Magnolia^® Blush being introduced by Tesselaar this year. Click here for Abbie’s column.

The first of the long-awaited michelia hybrids by these renowned New Zealand plant breeders to be released in the U.S., Fairy Magnolia Blush delivers lilac-pink, lightly fragrant flowers, preceded by velvet-textured, russet-colored buds accompanied by evergreen foliage resembling a camellia without the gloss. An upright, compact, bushy shrub, it reaches 8’ high by 6’ wide and is hardy in Zones 7b through 10, where it blooms from late winter through early spring.

“It could shape up to be the next big thing among savvy gardeners and landscapers,” raved the Taranaki Daily News (in Taranaki, New Zealand, where Fairy Magnolia Blush was first introduced). “Gardeners looking for an alternative to the tried-and-true camellias or the elegant but sometimes too-big magnolias should swoop in on this michelia.”

For more info on michelias and design ideas/companion plantings, see my earlier post on Fairy Magnolia Blush.

What are michelias?

By Abbie Jury, of Tikorangi – The Jury Garden

Michelias have been a passion of ours at Tikorangi for nigh on twenty years – despite there only being about five different species and two hybrids reasonably available in New Zealand (and three of those species are a relatively recent import). Mark has not let this deter him, and we now have hundreds of hybrids, probably well over a thousand (but who can be bothered counting?).

The genus has recently been reclassified by the botanists as magnolias. This action is not solely designed to confuse the home gardener or the producer, although both often tend to interpret reclassifications as a personal irritant. At this stage, we still refer to them as michelias for clarity. But over time, the revised nomenclature will take precedence.

The doltsopa and figo species have been around for a long time. We’ve never considered doltsopa to have commercial merit, however, because it’s such a huge tree. In flower, it’s a remarkable sight, but it takes up a space comparable to your average city block.  Plus, some forms may take a very long time to flower, and even then fail to put on a good display. ‘Silver Cloud’ (available in New Zealand) is the best known named form of doltsopa, and its deliciously fragrant floral display is impressive, but it’s tough to find and can also get too large. It also tends to defoliate after flowering, especially in cooler climates, so it can have very raggy times of the year. Finally, its flower, while large and fragrant, is rather floppy and lacks good form.

Figo, meanwhile, is often referred to as the port wine magnolia and is used very widely in New Zealand, particularly by landscapers as a large, useful evergreen shrub that will take clipping and that has a strong scent (reminds me of Juicy Fruit chewing gum). Again, it is a less-than-perfect plant. For one, it’s night-scented, so don’t be expecting to be bowled over by its fragrance. Of more concern is a tendency for the foliage to yellow at certain times of the year, when the plant is under stress or in full sun. Traditionally, we have had only one form of figo produced commercially in New Zealand – a form marked by its small flowers with purple and yellow tones. Being a species, it has considerable variations in form and overseas you may well spot different figos. Some of these different selections are now starting to appear in New Zealand, though we have yet to see one with lovely dark foliage.

In the 1970s, the late plant breeder Os Blumhardt crossed figo and doltsopa (a cross sometimes referred to as foggii hybrids). He raised a few seedlings and named three – ‘Mixed Up Miss,’ ‘Bubbles’ and ‘Hint of Pink.’ These hybrids gave a hint of what is possible: predominantly white flowers with a flush of pink on smaller growing trees suitable for home gardens – an intermediate between the shrubby figo and the large tree of doltsopa. They did, however, lose much of the fragrance.

Then in the 1990s, several new michelia species became available in New Zealand, but it was yunnanensis (or, more technically, Magnolia dianica) that attracted the most attention. A Chinese form, it is hardy, growing to a large shrub or small tree with small leaves and mass flowers with lightly scented, creamy-white goblets. Once established, it can be clipped.

Around the same time, a few plants of the tropical species champaca and the natural hybrid alba started to appear. Champaca is orange-flowered and very fragrant (in fact, it’s used in one of the world’s most expensive perfumes) but doesn’t offer the mass flowering common to many other species. Alba is the sought-after form. Although its creamy-yellow, spidery-shaped flowers aren’t particularly eye catching, it is coveted for its divine fragrance and extended flowering season.  In mild areas, it quickly grows to a fairly large tree with dense, glossy foliage.

If you want a michelia alba, it is one of those plants you may search long and hard to find, even in New Zealand, though we have seen it used as street trees throughout Asia.  

When the dreaded petal blight hit camellias, Mark stopped doing anything with breeding that genus and turned his attention to michelias, thinking that it’d be possible to get color into their flowers and to improve the foliage and form of some of the species to get better garden plants. Maudiae and yunnanensis, in particular, offered the promise of more hardiness for colder areas.

An increased color range in the flowers? Yes, definitely. We have pinks, yellows, green tones, creams and a whole range of bicolors and color mixes. That part of the breeding program has been most successful from the start. So too has the quest for better foliage been successful in a whole range of plants that stay relatively compact and bushy, losing the off colors of murky olive green or yellow as well as the tendency to defoliate after flowering.

Fragrance has been a problem and it is something of a disappointment when the offspring of two of the most fragrant species fail to inherit anything more than a mere hint of the sweet scent. Mark has been continuing breeding down the generations and back crossing hybrids to one of the originating species to reinstate the scent.

For a plant breeder, the quest for perfection is never ending. The combination of really good form, foliage, bud and flower color, fragrance, performance and ease of propagation is an elusive quest. Quite possibly, the more you have to choose from the harder it becomes to make a decision. But decisions have been made here on the first round of michelia selections and this year sees the release of the first of the colored-flowered varieties. Fairy Magnolia Blush introduces distinctively pink tones to good-sized flowers on a compact, large shrub. Other colors will follow under the Fairy Magnolia brand.

There are few plant genera as healthy and forgiving as michelias in the garden. They grow equally well in sun or shade and have no particular problems with pests or diseases. We never spray any of the plants once they are out of the nursery and we only clip or prune to shape. With so many seedlings to play with, we’ve had the luxury of using them as feature plants, hedges, shelter belts for the larger growing crosses, topiary and now we are pleaching (braiding or interlacing) a row of one variety for use in a new garden. We see them occupying a similar garden niche to the versatile camellia but without that plant genus’ disadvantages (susceptibility to petal blight, root rot, leaf gall, cankers and bud drop).

Of course, in everything there’s an opportunity for improvement, but until then – Fairy Magnolias are as good as it gets when it comes to this exciting new plant for warm-climate gardens!

A footnote from Lisa:

Fairy Magnolia Blush has already made a huge splash in Australia at the recent Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show. Here’s what show visitors said they loved about it:

• Love the flower itself, AND it’s slightly fragrant too!
• FLOWERING BUSH – Wow, we have been waiting for something like this for ages – there is a flower bud at every leaf axel …
• It will take over from photinia (a red-tipped shrub used for fence rows).
• LOVE the hedge–like effect.
• Rich lush green foliage year round.
• It’s green right to the bottom.
• And it grows into a thick solid hedge in such a short time.

Those mailorder gardening catalogs should be flooding in any day now.

And while we all enjoy looking at the latest coneflower, coreopsis and calibrachoa, it’s hard picturing these dramatic flowers and fantastic foliage nestled in among the other plants in our garden or landscape.

So here’s the third of four posts on easy garden design ideas and companion plantings for 2010 introductions by easy-care gardening experts Tesselaar Plants.

Today, let’s take a look at Fairy Magnolia® Blush. And as always, these suggestions can also be applied to any plant with a similar habit, color or form.

First, a quick run-down on this exotic, fragrant plant, since michelias are well…kind of new to a lot of us (also check out this great article and cultural information on michelias, by Fredrik Liljeblad at the Garden Web Forums at http://forums.gardenweb.com). 

The first of the michelia hybrids by New Zealand breeder Mark Jury to be released in the U.S., Fairy Magnolia Blush "could shape up to be the next big thing among savvy gardeners and landscapers,” raved the Taranaki Daily News (in Taranaki, New Zealand, where Fairy Magnolia Blush was bred and first introduced). “Gardeners looking for an alternative to the tried-and-true camellias or the elegant but sometimes too-big magnolias should swoop on this michelia.”

An upright, compact, bushy shrub, Fairy Magnolia Blush has lilac-pink, fragrant flowers  accompanied by evergreen foliage resembling that of a camellia, but without the gloss. It grows 10’ to 14’ high by 8 to 10’ feet wide and is hardy in Zones 7b through 10. It blooms in late winter to early spring when sited in full sun to partial shade. 

When trying to incorporate michelias into your landscape, consider using them as a hedge (as seen in image above, from breeder Mark Jury’s Sept. 9, 2009 “Magnolia Diary” post on his blog “Tikorangi – The Jury Garden,” at http:/jury.co/nz/).  It also makes a beautiful espalier, topiary or specimen.

When it comes to companion plantings, renowned plant grower and developer Monrovia suggests pairing Fairy Magnolia Blush with its other Asian/Zen or tropical beauties like Bougainvillea ‘Cherry Blossom’,  Blood Banana, Hong Kong Orchid Tree and Hibiscus ‘Erin Rachel.’ With the help of a few big containers, this is the chance for cold-climate gardeners like me to create my own patio oasis.