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News 12 Staff

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Preview from Alex Calamia. Did he plan that? You know, I was at the start of his plant love. Let's go right to Alex now, who has a preview of that event in Oyster Bay? Hey Alex. Hey Aaron. Hey Rachel, I am of course, very, very excited. You can see a few photographs of the more than 200 types of camellia flowers that are in bloom right now in the Camellia house just next door to Co Hall where I am standing right now. Now you're in for a real treat. Now that the sun is coming up, we are going to show you what it looks like inside that glass houses, the largest collection of in the entire northeast under glass. But I am here with Kayla, who is the marketing and communications Manager at Planning Fields Foundation to talk about the fun that's gonna happen inside the historic and beautiful Co Hall during the Camellia Festival this weekend. Absolutely. It's gonna be a blast. It's gonna be tea, tastings, music, scavenger hunts, crafts, watercolor, painting, typewriter. It's tours, uh, self guided tours of Co Hall itself. Um, and so much more and it's a pretty incredible family, I mean, to have 100 year old Camellia house, there's nothing like this in the entire northeast. How did that come to be? Wr Co and family loved horticultural in general, but particularly Camellias and they actually wound up building a storage place for this rare collection at the time, um that were very expensive to keep up. And so he had the opportunity to actually reimagine it um with the help of the Olmsted Brothers firm. Um and they created this grand vision of what a perfect showcase for these beautiful plants should look like. That's pretty amazing. You were telling me that the Olmsted Brothers are the people who are behind Central Park. So they knew what they were doing and you can see the camellias yourself this weekend or really any day of the week except for Tuesdays. The Camellia House is open to the public, but this weekend is the time for the whole festivity, the arts, the crafts and all of the fun inside Co Hall. You can get tickets for the event. It is again, Saturday and Sunday and we have all the information on our website News, twelve.com, but stick around guys because we're gonna show some pretty flowers in a bit and I can't wait to see all of them. I can't believe how many types of these flowers there are. Alex. Thank you.

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This is a big deal and who better to give us that preview than our garden guru himself, Alex Kalama. He's at Oyster Bay right now to tell us what's happening there. Hey, Alex. Hey, guys. Yeah, we're actually hearing the ice fall from the roof here at the Camellia house at planting fields in Oyster Bay. But it doesn't feel like winter when you're surrounded by all of these beautiful blooms which only flower this time of the year. There are over 200 camellia plants, some of them 100 years old. It is truly one of a kind and I have the pleasure of talking to the director of Horticulture at Planting Fields Foundation, Donna Moore, who isn't just going to talk about plants, but we're gonna do a little weather talk too because we're in our jackets this morning. And why is that? This isn't your typical greenhouse? Well, this is not a tropical greenhouse. We do have a tropical greenhouse on the property, but this is all about giving the right conditions to these camellias. They're not hardy um outdoors here on Long Island, but inside in the Camellia House, we keep the temperatures on the cool side because that's really the conditions they like. And we also know that's what they need to set bud and then to flower at this time of the year. So you were saying that you actually deliberately kept the house a little bit cooler and now raised the temperature ever so slightly just in time for the festival, right? We do. So it's kind of like playing a little games with mother nature, but keeping the house cool, keeps the buds tight. And then as we raise the temperature in increments of about five degrees, the buds all of a sudden start to expand and then they come into their full bloom so we can kind of play with that a little bit, but this is their time to bloom from somewhere late November, early December till about the end of March. So we're really, really at the peak of it now, I love it. Thank you, Donna. You can ask Donna all of your questions. I'll be here as well this weekend on Saturday for the Camellia Festival, but it runs Saturday and Sunday 10 to 4. Head to our website, get your tickets. But you could also visit the Camellia House any time of the year. It is open all year long except for Tuesdays guys.

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News 12’s Alex Calamia is in Oyster Bay with a preview of what festival attendees can expect.

Annual Camellia Festival to be held this weekend at Planting Fields Arboretum

News 12’s Alex Calamia is in Oyster Bay with a preview of what festival attendees can expect.

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