How to grow azaleas: long lasting, lime-hating and mostly cold-tolerant

Azaleas are long-lived stalwarts of the garden that are available in a variety of colours

- GRAHAM RICE

AZALEAS are neat, long-lived, lime-hating, mostly cold-tolerant shrubs with brightly coloured spring flowers. They are among the most valuable garden shrubs as they rarely outgrow their space and reliably produce dazzling colour each spring. They can be evergreen, retaining leaves all the year round, or deciduous, in which case their leaves fall as winter approaches.

Their flared, funnel-shaped flowers are often brightly coloured and come in every shade, except blue, including vivid red, orange and yellow tones, as well as white and softer pastel pink and lilac shades. A few are bicolored, striped or flecked. Most azaleas have simple trumpet-shaped flowers 2-3in (5-7.5cm) across, although some flowers can be up to 5in (12.5cm) and some have extra petals creating double flowers. A delicious scent is a feature of some varieties.

The flowers are often carried singly at the leaf joints, but can also appear in clusters and show themselves off very effectively. Reblooming varieties are also now available.

In small gardens they are ideal as foundation plantings, as ground cover, as individual specimens and can even be grown as specimens in containers. Where there is more space they can also be planted as ground cover in sweeping drifts.

How to buy azaleas

AZALEAS are sold in retail nurseries, garden centres, DIY stores, discount stores and by mail order. Mail-order nurseries offer the widest selection of types and colours.

Plants are often sold in containers and also bareroot. These are plants that were dug from the nursery with the dirt on their roots and wrapped in hessian secured with twine, or even wire, for transport.