Reviving an Ancient Azalea

We bought our house in 2019, in June. The previous owners were retirees and were selling after their mobility challenges meant living in a 2 story single family home just got to be too much. When we moved in, we saw evidence that a lot of care had been taken of the outside of the home to keep things very aesthetic and symmetrical…neatly sculpted shrubs that were perfectly full and round, including three giant holly trees and three giant azaleas. Thus the scene is set for my battle. Bloom, azalea, damn it! 

I waited, with bated breath. They say that you need to wait a full 12 months to watch the landscaping traverse a full orbit around the sun. Are there hidden gems, perennials that will make an appearance in the summer? The fall? The winter? Will the trees blossom and bloom in the spring, or show signs of blight and powdery mildew? 

We had moved from a tiny townhouse, just over 1800 square feet, with 18 feet of curb appeal that I cultivated within an inch of its life. A firm believer in perennials (why spend money every year for flowers if you can do it once and have blooms and color every year after?), the stoop was always bright with color. My favorites were heuchera, which come in a wide variety of colors, plus lavender and dianthus (I managed to get the annual varieties to survive from year to year with careful mulching, and let’s face it, some very lucky abuse). If you are a plant person, you may already be able to guess another factor in my choices - deer. Tulips were out, daffodils were in. We had blooms and color year round. 

In the new house, I just waited. And month after month, there was nothing. Seasons came and went. No hidden gems.

But still, I waited. If nothing else, I could tell that there were three huge azaleas along the front walk. My last hope. By May 10, after waiting 335 days, I should see blooms. Then, May came and went. No blooms. No fluffy white or bubbling pink blooms, just boring round green shrubs. 

Huge, green azalea bushes, with nary a bloom in sight.

And this was May 2020. The world had shut down months earlier. I was stuck inside, the kids were stuck inside, everybody was just stuck. And I was stuck with no azaleas.

I started to do my research. That first year, I visited a garden center and got a recommendation for a specific fertilizer and was told to apply it right away, that even applying it in June, we might still see some blooms. We might still see some blooms. Nope. (And no wonder. The blooms develop over the summer, for the following year. They need food in July/August/September to prep for flowers in May).

I also started planting. There was literally nothing else there, just giant beds of mulch. I started with some lavender, heuchera, and hydrangeas, as well as creeping thyme, hostas, and a few other things.

 

A work in progress: mulch, perennials, and lots of dirt under my nails.

Seasons came and went. One year, there would be a few blooms. On three azalea bushes, 3-4 feet in diameter, a few blooms. That was it. 

For years, there were so just a handful of blooms.

One year, after Covid, after we had painted all those cute rocks to leave around the neighborhood, I took a bucket of them, and threw them one by one at the azalea.

It didn’t help.

Then, last June, I got out the clippers. Clip clip. CLIP CLIP CLIP CLIP CLIP. The poor thing went from a perfect round shape to a scalped, bare misshapen blob. I also started some soil amendments and fertilizer. I loaded up the base of the plants with worm castings, grass clippings, mulch, and a bloom-boosting fertilizer. This week, there were more blooms than we’d ever seen before.

Wahoo! An azalea with FLOWERS! PLURAL!

So, in a few weeks, I’m going to chop some more. Where we had blooms, I’ll probably try to leave them alone, but I’m going to cut the other two bushes WAY back again, too. Get light down into the center of the plant, and hopefully remove a lot of the bulk. That way, hopefully the plant will be able to focus on boosting blooms, and spend less energy on growing. I definitely don’t need an azalea that’s 5 feet across.

Tips

• Prune in late spring, after the bloom window  in your region (for me, in the Mid-Atlantic, it’s in May) 
• Don’t over-fertilize—too much nitrogen = leafy growth, not flowers.
• Keep soil moist but not soggy, and mulch to retain moisture.
• Don't be afraid to prune deeply. Your azalea doesn't really care if it is nice and smooth and round. It would rather be healthy.

That’s it. Your spouse may be pretty cranky if you give this tip a try, but it worked for me. My spouse is pretty patient, and to be honest, we were ready to dig these boring bushes up and plant something new, so this was my own personal crusade to save a life. I’ll let you know how it looks next year!