All the Dirt on Gardening

The Mobile AL Botanical Gardens are an ideal destination for winter and spring vacations along the Gulf Coast. This relatively small public garden has large azalea and rhododendron collections for spring viewing and a significant collection of camellias for an ideal winter visit perfect. Of the 100-acres that the park holds, 40-acres is set aside as a woodland park with trails winding among flower beds and distinct garden spaces. As of August 1, the garden closes at noon due to the heat in Mobile. One of the unique features of the garden is that many of the paths are wheelchair accessible. The walk from the parking lot to the main entrance is easy to navigate. The first planted area visitors see when entering the property is a demonstration garden from the ReBloom Mobile Project that showcases plants for home gardens that provide bloom year-round. The paths are inlaid with local stone placed around a central lawn area. The Millie McConnell Azalea and Rhododendr...

April is Azalea season in our growing zone 7 with landscapes and parks in full bloom everywhere we go. The southern states had their full bloom season last month and Oregon will get to celebrate the beauty of Azaleas next month. The big box stores, garden centers and nurseries are loaded with a wide variety of container-grown Azaleas for your garden and this is the ideal time to plant them. But with so many sizes, colors and varieties to choose among, making the right choices can be challenging.  Encore re-blooming azaleas at Lowe's While most of us look at color as our first criteria, there are other qualities to consider such as size at maturity, length of bloom time, and the ideal location to ensure long-lived beauty. Azaleas are close cousins of Rhododendrons and many garden books, websites and catalogs still put them together in the same section so look for them there when doing your research for the perfect plants. They are so close, in fact that growing in...

Dr. Leonard Miller Knows Rhododendrons Rhododendrons are members of the Heath plant family, a large collection of thousands of evergreen and deciduous shrubs that includes Azaleas. Gardeners distinguish between rhododendrons and azaleas but plant botanists do not. Usually, rhododendrons are evergreen and usually azaleas are deciduous. There are other distinctions between the two in the leaf shape, number of stamens, etc. What they have in common is a wide range of flower colors and their growing needs. Past president of the American Rhododendron Society, Len Miller, has a collection of 300-rhododendrons at his Lendonwood Gardens in Grove OK. Miller said that anyone who wants to grow rhododendrons in Oklahoma has to realize that all growing conditions have to be met and all are essential. He outlined those conditions as acid soil, moisture and drainage. "Their natural growing location is on the northern slope of a mountain," Miller said. "They have to be well protected i...