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Old Azaleas
elliedaisy
Posts: 35
in Talkback
I have two old azaleas that were in our garden when we moved here 15 years ago. They are breathtakingly beautiful but have become woody and have slightly fewer blooms each year. I hesitate to mess with them because I love them so much. One is a lovely fresh yellow and white and the other is a golden pink sunset colour. Wow! Please help if you can.
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A light prune after flowering, and I mean light, removing old stems and dead wood will help and then a feed and mulch will encourage new growth Ellie. They can be either perfectly reliable or down right temperamental in my experience, especially when large.
Thank you so much. I will treat them very gently.
to the other extreme, I found two azalea's amongst a massive rhodo. They were really leggy as they were trying to get some sun. Only found them when they flowered two years after being in the house.
I dug them up, cut them right back and now we are on year two and although progress is super slow we have flowers on one of them this year, even though vine weevil have attacked them.
I don't want to advise you to do this and your beloved plant die and it be my fault, maybe cut back one stem and see how it gets on ?
I'm seeing reviving my azaleas as being a long term project. Another one I found smoothered by snowberry which I'm trying to nuture back to life. It has two chances but wouldn't have survived being left where it was. it has a few flowers this year too
Good luck.
Sounds like they are deciduous varieties. These will survive being hard pruned after flowering. If you don't want to be that brave then go for renovation pruning - hard prune one third of the old shoots each year until you have the size and shape you want.