Lemon Lights Azalea

Lemon Lights is the deciduous azalea for gardeners who have been told azaleas will not survive their winters. Bred in the University of Minnesota Northern Lights program specifically for bud hardiness, Rhododendron 'Lemon Lights' sets flower buds that come through winter lows around 30 below and open anyway. Bud kill, not root kill, is what usually ends azalea bloom in cold gardens, and that is the problem this series was built to solve. It grows 4 to 5 feet tall and 3 to 4 feet wide, hardy from Zone 4 through Zone 8 in full sun to part sun.

The flowers are bright lemon yellow with a paler throat, carried in full trusses before the leaves expand, and fragrant enough to notice from a few feet away. Bloom comes in mid to late spring, later than the evergreen azaleas, which often carries it past the frost that catches earlier bloomers.

Foliage is clean green through summer and turns bronze to burgundy in fall before dropping. This is a deciduous azalea, so it stands bare through winter rather than holding leaves.

Azaleas want acidic soil, in the range of pH 4.5 to 6.0. In neutral or alkaline ground the leaves turn yellow between the veins and the plant never really takes off. If your soil runs alkaline, it does better in a container or a raised bed than in an open border.