NEWBERG, Ore. — After scaling back to a run-and-walk event for the past few years, Newberg is bringing back the full Camellia Festival this spring.
The 18th Annual Camellia Festival is scheduled for Saturday, April 11, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., organized by the Chehalem Parks and Recreation District at the Chehalem Cultural Center, 415 E. Sheridan St. The event will once again feature a vendor marketplace, cultural performances, a plant sale, and the Oregon Camellia Society’s annual bloom show.
The festival carries particular weight in Newberg, which has held the informal title of “Camellia City” for more than seven decades. In April 1949, the city passed Ordinance 1055, making the camellia its official flower, and Camellia Day was first celebrated in 2009 with about 50 people at the Newberg Public Safety Building.
The Chehalem Cultural Center opened in 2010, and its first event was the Camellia Festival. That same year, CPRD Parks and Landscape Director Bryan Stewart grew the first flower of what would later become the City of Newberg’s unique variety of camellia, propagated and registered with the American Camellia Society in 2018.
By 2019, attendance had grown to around 6,000 people.
The day begins at 9 a.m. with the Camellia Run/Walk 5K and 10K on the Cultural Center forecourt, where runners will receive a gallon camellia plant after finishing.
Festival doors open at 10 a.m. with the Oregon Camellia Society‘s 85th Annual Bloom Show, a vendor marketplace featuring local artists and makers, and a plant sale presented by CPRD and the Oregon Camellia Society.
The afternoon program explores the camellia’s East Asian heritage, with a traditional Japanese tea ceremony by Issoan Tea of Portland at 11 a.m., a koto performance by Oregon Koto-Kai at noon, an Ikebana floral arrangement demonstration at 1 p.m., and a Lion and Dragon Dance by Portland Lee’s Association at 2 p.m.
The festival is free and open to the public; the run requires separate registration at cprdnewberg.org.
