poorly camellia

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.

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.

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

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 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

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.