In the Fall of 2023, Cohen’s Retreat Community Foundation & over 3000 Savannah Chatham County Public & Private School students joined together to plant 1500 Royal Velvet camellia’s along the beloved Harry Truman Bike Path in Savannah, GA. The community service effort was an incredible reflection of the impact our Youth can have on their own City, and how much fun they can have in the meantime. Each Friday over this 6-week service project, public & private schools from across the County would come together with one common goal: learn about the rich history of the camellia flower in Savannah & how they'll be contributing to it moving forward. Each student that participated in the Savannah Camellia Project was able to leave their own mark on history in a way - with a plant tag on their camellia, where they left their name & year on each plant. Cohen's Retreat Community Foundation deemed this project a success once we saw new friendships being made between students that may never have met each other otherwise, new skills and interests being developed in nature & gardening, and even just hearing the students saying they'll return with their friends & families to show them the hard work they did that day to plant their camellia. We intended for this Project to unify our community, but it truly touched our hearts in ways unimaginable.
The Savannah Camellia Festival will be the first annual celebration of this historic project - celebrating the efforts of the students & educators, and hopefully reuniting those that made new friends along the trail. We also want to take this opportunity to provide more education & information on the camellia flower itself; this project was a small first step & we learned many students would take advantage of this if it were accessible.
The day's events are in partnership with the Coastal Georgia Camellia Society & include a bloom show, plant sale, keynote speaker, information sessions, and arts & crafts activities.
The bloom show begins staging at 9AM at Cohen's Retreat. This 2 hour time period will be utilized for those interested in entering a bloom into the competition to be judged by the public. Each participant can enter more than one bloom into the show. Once participants arrive at Cohen's Retreat for staging (prior to 11AM), they will enter through the side door entrance of the Art Tank event space, and go through the registration process for the competition. Once you have completed registration, you are welcome to return back to Cohen's Retreat once the event is open at 11AM.
The day's activities all run from 11AM-4PM. The plant sale is with Hobbes Hill Farms, and a portion of the sales go towards the Cohen's Retreat Community Foundation for the upkeep of the camellia trail. They will be selling dozens of varieties of camellias outside of Cohen's throughout the event, and it is even the same Master Gardener that grew the 1500 Royal Velvet camellias planted for the Savannah Camellia Project. What a beautiful full circle moment!
We will have light refreshments available for guests with a cash bar, and encourage those looking to visit for the Camellia Festival to also browse through the rest of Cohen's Retreat and possibly grab a bite at the restaurant after our feature speaker!
Please Note
Official Guides of Savannah aims to provide the most up-to-date information on events listed on The Lobby List. In the event of a change, we will do our best to make sure it is reflected in our list. However, the best source for current information is the link to the actual event included in The Lobby List posting.