poorly camellia

Give it special fertiliser for lime-hating plants, or labelled for ericaceous plants. Is it in ericaceous compost? You could use that to top it up.

If the sun hits it in the morning after a frosty night the buds get hit , the bush is frost tolerant but the buds freeze then a sudden thaw does for them

Thanks to both of you - I think we could have used the wrong compost, and the sun after frost could definitely have happened. We're in SW France and in winter the nights can be very cold, then quickly warms up when the sun gets out.

If you can change it so that it faces West, not East, that should help hugely.

anno is right about the compost. Feed with the right kind of compost in the summer when the buds start to form. They like shade more than direct sun. If you remember they come from deep glens in Chinese mountains... Water with rain water if you can

If it's not in an acid soil or lime free compost, top dress liberally with peat and water with an ericaceous feed. We have a glorious camellia growing in oiur neutral garden soil, but I did include a lot of peat and top dress with peat every spring + feed.
I know peat is non PC, but nothing else available is acid enough for dressing.

aggie, the frost in the morning, sun later in the day thing is definitely an issue for the camellia in our garden. I also suspect that annodomini's point about concrete fence posts is an issue.

After the very cold winter a couple of years ago, despite covering the camellia with anti frost material and the roots with the same, I thought ours had died. I put lots of ericaesious compost on the soil and fed the plant with a dilute feed for camellias. The leaves turned back from yellow to green. There are lots of buds this year but I fear the cold spell a couple of weeks ago has resulted in (so far) only one weedy flower.

Also, as others have said East facing is a bad location, if you are not able to move it, try to shade it from early morning sun.

It is facing SE in fact, and will be easy to move.
We'll have to search for ericaceous compost tomorrow.

The thing is that I should be hanging my head in shame , I had two lovely Camellias and lost them both due to not wrapping the tubs they were growing in . I had grown complacent due to mildish winters .

I have a camelia on an east facing fence planted in fairly poor garden soil. When we came to the house three years ago, it looked poorly. I fed it with dilute camelia food and it is now very healthy, and last year and this it was full of flowers. Only problem this year is that they all seem to be at the back of the plant so not shown off to their best advantage. It's east facing situation does not seem to affect it at all. My neighbour has one also on an east facing fence and it is a monster.

We moved house a year ago and have an enormous camellia in a west-facing position, it is about 10ft high and 8ft across and started to flower this year at the end of February and has been absolutely stunning. There is another much smaller camellia about 12ft away from it and it looks very sorry for itself with lots of brownish buds and just a few flowers, I think I will try some camellia food and see if it improves.

When we had a couple of really cold winters (about 5 yrs back) a lot of plants suffered that normally survive well. Interesting fact I picked up from the radio at the time - evergreens are much more vulnerable to low temperature than deciduous plants, which are fully dormant. If the soil freezes around the roots an evergreen tree gets dehydrated because it is still losing moisture through its leaves.
My tip is - moving a shrub in a pot as near as possible to the wall of the house might help, as heat escapes from a heated house .

I think the problem with east facing is the combination of frost and early sun, not a combination that we get every winter, after all for two years running my zonal geraniums have survived outside in tubs.
It is only the flower buds that are damaged, the plant should be happy anywhere given the right soil etc.

Once again thanks for all the replies. There's so much gardening know-how on here.
I put this same question on a french gardening forum and got no replies!

An update - some of the buds have started to burst into flower
And there are a few new buds forming. Most of the brown ones have dropped off now.

Good news. Nurture it through the summer in a shady corner and you'll have a fantastic plant this time next year.

triciaF, that's good news. I'm very pleased with my camellia as well, its rallied after 12 months careful nurturing and is covered in blooms.

Our Camellia has been gorgeous this year (3rd year) covered in blooms, jus starting to drop. Just planted a new one, couple of blooms, needs a couple of years to mature.

Thanks everyone - but another update:
Our chicken were out the other day and thought the new flowers were some tasty morsels, so petals everywhere grrr

I can't see it! But do sympathise. I won't let mine out, but I have a friend whose new chickens have just eaten her entire newly planted garden. I told her to wait until the plants were bigger, but would she listen....

If you think chooks can wreck a garden, try a herd of cows!
I'd spent hours, days, weeks setting out our walled garden when farming,only to awake one morning to see 58 dairy cows demolishing all my very hard work.
DH didn't understand what all the fuss was, I could have very cheerfully murdered him and held a barbecue for the whole village!
It was heartbreaking so had to start all over again.

My dad had a cow (may have been a bullock) lean on his car, very large dent !

I'd have been heartbroken too, loopy. It was bad enough when I had just one cow in my front garden.