Mandarin Lights Azalea

Ruffled bright orange flowers open before the foliage emerges, so the color sits on bare stems with nothing competing. Rhododendron 'Mandarin Lights' grows 4 to 6 feet tall and wide in full sun to part sun, hardy from Zone 4 through Zone 8.

The flowers carry a light fragrance and bloom in late spring, after the frost that catches earlier azaleas and after the mid-spring orange varieties have finished. Fall foliage turns purple to bronze, which gives the shrub a second season.

For most of the last century, gardeners north of Zone 5 could grow an azalea but rarely see it flower, since the plant survived while the buds froze. Northern Lights changed that. Buds hardy to 30 below mean the display arrives every spring, not just after a mild winter. The series has grown to a dozen or so selections in white, pink, orange, red, and yellow, all deciduous, most of them fragrant, and all blooming in mid to late spring after the frost that catches earlier azaleas.

The habit is upright and tends toward legginess, with roughly a foot of open stem at the base, so a lower shrub or perennial planted in front improves it. This is a deciduous azalea, so the leaves drop in fall. Acidic soil is necessary, roughly pH 4.5 to 6.0, with good drainage and steady moisture. Alkaline ground turns the foliage yellow. Mulch the shallow roots.