Chronicles of a Crazy Collector and his Loving Wife

“My son just bought a property in Slidell with lots of camellias,” she said.

As Stephanie and I acquired more camellias and began to show blooms, many of my clients became aware of this new interest in my life; my closest friends even visited some of the shows and participated in our new passion. For years we had known of the loss of the Zerkowsky’s Tammia Nursery in Slidell and the many varieties created there; however, we had heard of other gardens and people who had collected some of their plants and were known for their collections. After all, Slidell, Louisiana, was named the Camellia City because of the support and actions of its camellia loving mayors–Mayor Webb Hart and Mayor Homer Fritchie. Camellias abounded at the Fritchie home as well as the surrounding neighborhood, and Webb Hart had both camellias at his home and at his nursery on the road between Bush and Folsom where he grafted and stuck camellias from his 600 plants.

We had tried finding some of the lost Zerkowsky varieties, but it was difficult. We visited the park named for Homer Fritchie in Slidell and found some poorly maintained camellias there; none of the missing Zerkowsky varieties were evident. We were surprised to find one of the creations of our friends Ed and June Atkins growing there. I took a few cuttings of it, as it was one of the few I had not secured from Ed and June themselves. On other visits we saw that the camellias continued to languish; it was gone.

One morning at the office, a client called all excited. I thought she might have a special new assignment, but instead she said, “My son just bought a property in Slidell with lots of camellias.” I did not recognize the address she gave me, but after looking up old members of the American Camellia Society, I found that it had been the home and garden of John Geiser, one of the luminaries of Slidell camellians and a compatriot of the aforementioned Webb Hart. I learned Geiser didn’t

have a huge collection, but he grew very fine blooms. Webb recalled that on one trip they took together to the Birmingham show, he accidentally dumped his container of blooms upside down. Despite this, he still won many awards. We had to visit and see this garden for ourselves. So off we went to visit a beautiful property along Bayou Liberty in western Slidell.

A stone’s throw from a shopping mall, the property was nestled in a nearly pristine wooded area with the appearance of being untouched despite its closeness to the hustle and bustle of business, shoppers, and traffic. In fact, despite the city offering to pave the road, the residents asked that it be maintained as a gravel drive. As we came along the property and turned into the driveway, there was no mistaking the camellias. On both sides of the driveway were large plants but also a garden of mostly neatly trimmed camellias. Another camellia paradise!

We met the Caplingers and were invited to stroll, inspect, review, and make comments and suggestions about the collection and its maintenance. The new owners were new to camellias but were told they had something special. Special it was! While much of the garden was the old standards that everyone embraced (like ‘Kramer’s Supreme’, ‘Coronation’, ‘Dixie Knight Supreme’, and ‘Laura Walker’, to name a few), John Geiser also had many cultivars that I had never seen at any local shows and were not in our collection–‘Eleanor Franchetti’, ‘Keepsake’, ‘Corsage’, ‘Twilight’, ‘Dautel’s Supreme’, and others.

The plants themselves had plastic pipe sleeves protecting their trunks so that weed eaters could not rip at their bark and girdle them, and nearly all the plants were tagged with unique name tags–big wire rings that interlocked and had copper tags with the names hand stamped into them. John Geiser wanted to see the name of each variety quickly as he prepared

for the local shows. The Caplingers also indicated they had an inventory of all the plants, although there was no map identifying their exact location. This was super documentation not always seen among the old timers who relied on their knowledge more than solid records. We agreed we would return during blooming season and attempt to replace a few of the “name rings” that were no longer in place.

We returned in the winter and did reidentify some of the plants. We also took some cuttings to graft of varieties that were not in our collection. In order to involve the Caplingers more in the camellia world and the Slidell “camellia society,” I took a few blooms of theirs to the Ozone Club show shortly thereafter. They won Best White Novice Bloom with a ‘Coronation’. They were thrilled.

And then came Katrina! The bayou rose, trees fell, and the garden was devastated. With a flooded home to repair, the camellia garden was put on the backburner. They were well aware that the home would flood, as Geiser had suffered from the rising waters earlier, waking up with water lapping at his bed. Once an area of beauty, the garden was now a ghost of itself with plants broken by the large trees of the neighboring property crashing down upon them; some were uprooted and

washed away. The life of camellias in Louisiana’s hurricane ravaged areas is a tough one. The Geiser garden was nearly a Geiser wasteland. Renaming the plants that lost their tags would require another year before blooms were profuse enough; important varieties were totally lost (like ‘Keepsake’). The Caplingers were devastated with this loss, but their priority was their children and repairing their home. The garden was cleaned up, but was never again the same place of special pride and joy. The Caplingers have relinquished the property to a new family who are in the process of learning what they have is more than just a beautiful sight in the winter time. It is a legacy of another of our lost camellians.