Electric Lights Red Azalea

True fire-engine red flowers cover this shrub in early spring, a saturated red rather than the orange-reds most azaleas produce. Rhododendron Electric Lights™ Red grows 4 to 5 feet tall and 3 to 4 feet wide in part sun to part shade, hardy from Zone 4 through Zone 7.

The flowers are lightly fragrant and bloom early, before the leaves emerge.

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.

This is a deciduous azalea, so the leaves drop in fall. Acidic soil is necessary, roughly pH 4.5 to 6.0, and it takes less sun than most of the series, which suits a woodland edge.