I met my first camellia tree about 40 years ago, in Melbourne. Till then I had only known camellia bushes. This tree was in a courtyard, five metres high perhaps, with thick, twisted branches, a thousand or so rose-coloured blooms among its dark green leaves, and a crimson carpet on the ground. It wasn’t till I had a closer look at the flowers I realised they were camellias. Who knew?

Any canny camellia grower, which I wasn’t. Since then I’ve planted a few dozen camellias. Most have been slow growing, but I did put in a few fast-growing sasanquas. And this winter when I looked out the kitchen window to see if the sasanqua in the back courtayrd was in bloom yet, I realised it had turned into a tree - one covered in butterfly pink single blooms, too.

That is the secret of camellia tree growing: most camellia bushes double in size each year, if treated well. When a thumb sized camellia bush - or skinny little twig - doubles in size it’s hardly noticeable. When your two-mere high and wide camellia doubles, suddenly you have a camellia tree.

Many - or even most - gardeners prefer camellia bushes to trees. They prune their bushes annually, or every few years. You also need to grow the right camellia if you want a tree-sized one, as camellias range from 1-6 metres high, and wide. The most commonly grown ones in Australia are Camellia sasanqua, which tolerates more sun than the others and is faster growing, Camellia japonica and Camellia reticulata, but there are many others, like Camellia Sinensis.

I suspect the gorgeous Melbourne specimen with its thick braches was a cannily pruned, elderly Camellia japonica, possibly a century old, and I’ve seen some giant Camellia reticulata in warmer climates than ours. Check with your garden center, or a specialist camellia nursery to find the ones best for your area, climate, position, soil type and with the right flowers for your heart's delight, be they massed small and single, frilly skirted or miniatures for pots, as well as camellias that produce so much nectar that their petals are ringed by tiny brown bird prints - excellent if you love birds more than entirely immaculate blooms.

If you do decide to prune your camellias to keep them neat or well shaped, remove dead wood and any surplus braches in winter to spring, or give a light prune at any time, especially if you have a camellia hedge - their tips need to be pruned off whenever they are growing strongly, the more regularly the better.

Camellias like deep, well drained fertile soils with a good mulch of compost. (This applies to about 99.9 per cent of the plants humans prefer for their gardens or orchards). Failing that, keep the soil around you camellias slightly acidic, and feed in spring and mid-summer, and mulch at any time.

A mulch as soon as they begin to bloom may help keep the soil cool, and keep the bushes flowering longer. Sugar cane, Lucerne hay or composted autumn leaves are all excellent, but keep the mulch clear of the trunk. Don’t whippersnip around the trunk either. Whippersnipping injuries are an excellent way to kill your bush . Growers who know a heck of a lot more than I do about camellias recommend scattering a few handfuls of sulphate of potash on a camellia hedge just before flowering.

This is an excellent time to buy camellias, as you can see exactly what flowers you’ll get. You have two choices: buy all the same kind, for uniform excellence and one great glorious camellia flower fest, or buy a wide range of early to medium and later bloomers so you have flowers from early autumn to late spring.

Actually, there’s a third choice. Buy both. That’s always been my rule for a happy garden. Go for ‘‘lots’’.