Who’s who We talk to Jennifer Trehane, the leading authority on camellia cultivation

Having run both the UK’s leading camellia nursery and Britain’s first commercial blueberry farm, this indefatigable enquirer is still travelling the world, seeking to learn yet more

Her eyes sparkling, whooping with laughter, Jennifer Trehane recalls her last visit, in 2015, to Oshima Island, known as Camellia Island to its neighbours in Japan. Three million Camellia japonica grow wild on the mountainside, their seeds gathered each year and pressed to make fine oils. The children at the local high school are trained in camellia culture and can identify every tree in the school’s extensive collection. There are camellia dances, camellia chopstick holders; dishes are garnished with radishes carved into camellia blooms. Invited in her capacity as a director of the International Camellia Society, Jennifer was surprised to land to the sound of chanting: Jen-ni-fer… Jen-ni-fer… “I was treated like a pop star,” giggles Jennifer, still tickled pink by the flagwaving crowds. On Camellia Island, the editor of the International Camellia Journal, author of the standard work on the genus and joint founder of the International Camellia Society Gardens of Excellence scheme is a far more important visitor than any president or pope.

Jennifer did not always love the flower. “It was just a job,” she says, matter-of-factly. And one that arose entirely by accident. In 1947 Jennifer’s father spotted a curious advertisement: 100 blueberry plants from the deliciously named Lulu Island (near Vancouver) offered free to any British grower as a gesture of post-war solidarity. Eighty-seven bushes duly arrived, and prospered in the sandy Dorset soil of her father’s garden. Ten years on, David Trehane, now convinced that blueberries could have a commercial future, ordered 1,000 from the USA. They arrived scorched almost to death. Undaunted, he decided that they would just have to propagate their own and despatched his daughter to survey a suitable site.

“It was just a marshy wood,” she recalls, “full of fallen trees and moor grass.” But the thin, damp, acidic soil was perfect for blueberries. It fell to 21-year-old Jennifer, newly graduated with a horticulture degree from Reading University, to set up the nursery site, building frames and installing water, heating cables and among the earliest mist propagators. But with the best will in the world, their modest stock of cuttings could not fill the capacious frames, so they added random cuttings from the garden – a few magnolias and azaleas, a handful of heathers, and four different camellias.

Jennifer was eager to carry on building up the new nursery, but her father had other ideas. As a girl (the oldest of six siblings), it was her ‘job’ to marry and have children. Her younger brother, Jeremy, would take charge when he was old enough. “In those days you didn’t argue with your parents,” sighs Jennifer. She duly married, went to live in the Lake District, and raised three children. But by the early 1980s, the marriage was over, and Jennifer was looking to move south and get back into horticulture. Now, to her astonishment, her father invited her to return home and take over the nursery.

Much had happened in the interim. Always interested in ericaceous shrubs, David Trehane had become fascinated by the camellias. He had become one of the founder members of the International Camellia Society, and through his contacts with breeders and collectors worldwide, had established his nursery as the go-to place for anyone interested in the genus. Yet by 1982 it was struggling. With minimal commercial experience (she had run a small pony-trekking business in the Lakes) and no specialist knowledge of her product, Jennifer was somehow required to turn the nursery round. She managed. “You either sink or swim in your life,” she declares. She learned from her father, her staff and her customers, and ran the nursery successfully for the next 13 years.

In 1991 Jennifer set off for Ireland to deliver a batch of camellias to a notable collector. In his garden she found a coachload of aficionados from the International Camellia Society, and before long she had joined their tour. It was to be the first of many, introducing her to camellias, both cultivated and wild, in many countries. She travelled to New Zealand and South Africa, joined plant-hunting expeditions in China and visited breeders in Australia and the USA. “The lure is curiosity,” she says. “I learned so much about cultivation by seeing wild camellias – how durable they are – one surviving in heavy shade and another in dry and exposed conditions. It’s not their beauty that interests me. Rather, I wonder why this one is different from that one. Where does it come from? If it’s a cultivar, who bred it? Travelling to find out, I meet all these wonderful people.”

Now in her 80th year, Jennifer continues to travel and learn, advising on camellias all over the world. She is also an expert on blueberries. And with her customary gusto, she has thrown herself into a brand-new project – writing her autobiography. There are those who creep timidly through life and those who hurl themselves at it full tilt, squeezing every ounce of adventure out of it. Jennifer Trehane is one of the latter, and her story will make a cracking read.

USEFUL INFORMATION Trehane Nursery, Stapehill Road, Wimborne, Dorset BH21 7ND. Tel 01202 873490, trehanenursery.co.uk

NEXT MONTH Garden designer Ann-Marie Powell.

“The lure is curiosity. It’s not their beauty that interests me. Rather, I wonder why this camellia is different from that one. Where does it come from? Who bred it?”