Rhododendron... every garden should have some

[derekb]

Anthony Why? not enough room for your Cyps

[mark smyth]

Anthony how could you dig out such a floriferous plant?

How big, small, is Rhododendron x yakushimanum 'Percy Wiseman'?

[Luc Gilgemyn]

Mark,
I've posted some pix of Percy Wiseman a week or so ago in this very thread - I've had it for some 7 or 8 years and it's abt 1 m high and 1.20 m wide.

[Anthony Darby]

Wrong colour, wrong place, too big, not enough room. Yesterday I had to destroy a phormium I had grown from seed. Needed a rip-saw to cut it to the ground, but the root didn't take much. Whole plant was over 6' tall and 5' spread.

[Luc Gilgemyn]

Here's my favourite in my garden

Rhododendron yakushimanum - trying to show how it opened up over the last two weeks - I've got problems to choose at what stage I like it best ?

[Maggi Young]

I understand your difficulty, Luc, R. yakushimanum is so beautiful every day! For me there are two favourite times, w one when the new foliage is making silver candles and one as your plant is shown on the 8th may... the flowers are large but there is still a lot of pink... lovely!

[shelagh]

Hi there Maggi and all you Rhodo fans,

This one is only for those of you with patience. My husband Brian sowed the seed in 1994, only one seedling survived.  It languished in a pot for a good few years in case it was a good specimen for the Show Bench.  Then when our daughter moved to 1000ft on the Lancashire moors he set it free in her garden.  This year it has flowered for the first time.  Only 13 years, and what is this little gem, Rhododendron metternichii minima.

[Ian Minty]

Here's a yellow rhody that is not long for my garden. If somebody wants it they can take it away.

Anthony, if you could hold onto it for a while longer I could pop down after I am back from offshore in June.
Thanks, Ian.

[fermi de Sousa]

Here are a couple of rhodos in the front garden in Craigton Rd, Aberdeen!
Taken a couple of weeks ago.
I hope I've named them correctly as Rh. yakushimanum and one of its hybrids (or is it the other way round?)
cheers
fermi

[Maggi Young]

You've got it right, Fermi! The first is pure Rhododendron yakushimanum and the second is the Yak hybrid  'Vintage Rose'

[Diane Whitehead]

My brother requests some ideas about why his plant of Fabia x bureavii has
produced pink new growth from old dormant buds.  I think maybe the buds
are too old and tired to produce green leaves.  He is hoping that he can
root these and have some pink plants.

[Maggi Young]

Since R. 'Fabia' can have some pink flush with new growth on occasion, perhaps that is where the lovely salmon colour is coming from in this hybrid. I would certainly encourage your brother to try to root some of these shoots because a rhod with foliage like a pink teddy bear is bound to be a winner! There is a stage of bureauvii foliage , before the ginger, cinnamon tones are completely established , that there is a slight pinky cast to the leaves, so I am assuming that the orange genes in Fabia are conspiring to  emphasise this colour. Why this should only happen in these new buds from old growth is a puzzle... but I like it! I wonder how long the pink colour will persist as the leaves mature ?

[Martin Baxendale]

Here's a quick pic of Rhododendron 'Polar Bear' flowering here now. The flowers are a bit smaller than usual and browning quickly because of the heat we've had. I just wish I could post the scent. It's a gorgeous spicy perfume. Really unique, like no other rhodo I know.

Not a brilliant pic. Difficult to even reach the flower trusses as they're so high up - it's a small tree! It's the scent I really grow it for (and its late season) as the flowers never last long in the August heat.

I first saw and smelled it at Westonbirt Arboreatum down the road from here. Got this one about 10 years ago as a tiny little thing. Now about 12 ft tall and only started flowering last year.

I like the scent as much as that of the Rh. x Loderi forms that I also grow, just as sensual but, as I say, spicier.

It always flowers in August, so needs plenty of shade. Mine's in an almost permanently shaded north-east facing corner of the house, but still flowers freely.

[Maggi Young]

Oh, Martin, I'm jealous! Just you wait, though, one of these years ( decades?) I'll be able to show you my R. auriculatum's flowers at around this time of year... perhaps by then we will have a scent facility on the Forum..I would love to think so.
Most of the Rhodos that have flowers on in our garden at the moment are ones doing their bit to cheer us by giving us "extra" flowers, none are really meant to be flowering this late... that's what the auriculatum is supposed to be providing for me, of course... ah well, what's twenty odd years to wait... I know a gardener needs patience but this is beyond a joke..... I should have bought a 'Polar Bear'.....but I was being a species snob that day and left the fat little polar bears in the nursery.

[Martin Baxendale]

Maggi, just stopped writing for tonight. I tried to go for mostly rhodo species, especially varieties of Rh. cinnabarinum, which I just love. But I found the species were slow to flower and not great when it came to flower-power in my conditions. In a bigger garden, where I could grow them in (non-limy) open ground, I could maybe live with that. But on my dry, limestone soil, having to grow my rhodos in containers or special pockets of ericaceous compost, able to water only with collected rainwater, I'm starting to feel I need more return for the effort I have to put in to just keep them alive! So my shy-flowering species are being thinned out a bit these days, and the classier hybrids are being retained for their reliability of flowering. I particularly like the Loderi forms for their fantastic scent and quite elegant, not too unspecies-like trusses. Polar Bear is another that, to my eye, looks more like and improved species than a hybrid rhodo. And the scent is amazing! An eight year wait for the flowers was long enough for me. Not sure I could wait 20 years for a rhodo to flower.