I've been watching the azaleas bloom this spring and they are decidedly smaller than in years past. Many of the branches have dried up and died, and the plants just seem to be in poor health. They're decades old and I thought were pretty darn hearty. Any ideas?

This one in particular worries me. It's in a bed, and has never been mulched (as far as I know). I could start I suppose. The leaves have holes, the flowers are brown, many branches dried up and dead, some white blotches on branches. I don't even know where to start here. I'd really appreciate some help!

Have you crawled down under there with your little trowel to see if the soil is staying damp? Azalea are very shallow rooted.

Looks a little exposed, but it's early still. Here's the base of the plant. Usually the Ivy and other ground cover keeps it protected, I think. Doesn't look super well overall though ...

My Azaleas that are decades old were never "hearty". Quite a few years ago, they were near dead from years of being ignored. That is in contrast to nearby, equally old, large leaf Rhododendrons, that I have always just pruned down to 3 to 5 feet tall (when they want to grow much taller blocking a view). The Rhododendrons grow aggressively with no care and are dense enough and have strong enough roots that weeds can't grow under them.

I then guessed that the weeds under the Azaleas were choking them. So I weeded, doing the Azaleas more harm than good.

They are now well on their way back to health. I think the key factor has been a thick layer of pine needle mulch. But I also used some fertilizer and water them occasionally when it is a long time between rain in the summer.

In another part of my yard, I have a large number of rooted Rhododendron branches that I planted, plus small shrubs related to Rhododendron purchased (by my wife) from nurseries. All those less established shrubs respond a little more clearly to good vs. bad treatment. To some extent, it is still guesswork. But the much older shrubs respond so slowly to good vs. bad treatment, it would all be guessing. So part of my understanding of the old sick ones is they want the same help as the new ones and just respond to it more slowly. Thus, after experimentally finding the thick layer of pine needle mulch was the best help for less established ones, I had the patience to see it help the older damaged ones.

The harder question is what to prune. For a short, critical, period in a non-established shrub, I can't see the differences between branches that are really dead vs. leafless branches that are going to come back (up to a year later) and the struggling shrub can't afford to lose. So I just wait until after I'm sure that phase is over before pruning anything.
But the old struggling Azaleas are always have branches die as well as always having branches fake die. Pruning nothing will soon give you a hopeless mess, while pruning everything that looks dead will soon reduce it to an empty stump. It became obvious that the shrub needs more energy to create a new branch than to reanimate a branch that was leafless without being dead. So I struggle to figure out what is really dead. A healthier shrub just replaces whatever you prune, and doesn't have live but leafless branches very often. So with a healthy shrub, you prune whenever in doubt. But that does not work on my old Azaleas.

Good luck with your problem Azaleas. I hope my suggestions help you. But there are always so many simultaneous factors there is a chance that what I think I know is wrong and maybe I'll learn something from other replies you get.

That is a SUPER useful post. Thank you for all of the good info! Given how exposed the base of this old guy is, I think I'll mulch it up tomorrow morning. The soil is damp now but the area definitely gets dry. Perhaps I've been in a similar boat: I've been doing a GREAT job with the fall and spring cleanups, getting old leaves out from the underbrush. Maybe it's been exposing too much of the base of the plant, where it would prefer to be insulated.

Azalea roots are tiny and fibrous. They are located mostly in the top 4" or so. As a result, you do not want to see weeds & Ivy under the azaleas; mulch (2-4" up to the drip line or further) will help keep the weeds away. Be careful removing the weeds/Ivy under the azaleas.

Leaves this time of the year may look pitiful (holes, leaf spots, etc) but new ones should leaf out after flowering is done.

Don't let the mulch touch the trunk of the azalea.

Hi
This is one very neglected little rhodo.
looks to me from the photo that a bramble has grown over a good part of it and it's died back because it's been denied light.
The ivy on the bottom has been robbing it of nutrients, so try removing the ivy by pulling it out, Then mulch with pine litter as suggested by others.
Or feed with an with ericaceous liquid feed after it flowers.
Kind regards
John

When I was short of pine needles and didn't really know better, I used wood chip mulch on some small leaf Rhododendrons (very similar to Azalea). It didn't do well.

Pine needles really are a better mulch for anything related to Rhododendron, if you can get them. The mulch is supposed to do a lot more than discourage weeds. It lets air reach the ground (the roots need some oxygen) while moderating the water, absorbing some of the water when it rains too hard and releasing some later to the ground, and blocking most of the evaporation when it gets drier.

Gently remove weeds under the Azalea before mulching. Getting enough of the weed to stop it coming right back would do too much harm to the Azalea. But just covering weeds with mulch is usually too little. For the aggressive plants I had under Azalea, it took several years of twice per year pull out the mulch, cut off the weeds at ground level and put the mulch back.

Thank you all for your help! I'll mulch tomorrow -- and try not to let the mulch touch the trunk. (Why not? Just curious!). If the ivy around the base is a problem, it goes. I'll create a little circle of mulch, and pull the bramble off. Stupid vines and weeds, choking out the good stuff!

Meandmyroses said:Hi
...and it's died back because it's been denied light.

Great point ... the whole area has been a little overgrown. I bought the property a year and a half ago and I've been trying to right wrongs ever since. I'll ensure it can breathe!

"try not to let the mulch touch the trunk" because:

Mulch can make the trunk of the shrub stay damp longer than it should. A damp trunk is an invitation to the shrub getting attacked by a wide variety of animals, insects and fungi that might not attack it with the trunk dry.

You want the mulch to keep the ground damp near the shrub, but with enough room for air to move to let the trunk surface dry out all the way to the ground.

I've never been great about that myself and haven't seen any specific problems that seem to be tied to that failure. So that answer was based on the theory I've read, not based on my experience.

My small rhododendron and related shrubs do fine with pine needles all the way to the base of the plant. I do remove the full size leaves (from oak etc.) that blow in and tend to collect around the trunk of small shrubs. My healthy big old Rhododendrons have whatever oak leaves blow in stay there (it would be very hard to fix that). Leaves piled against every point that tangle of shrubs connects to its roots, is far worse for the shrub than pine needles there. The bottom few inches of each trunk probably never get dry. But a big, well established, large leaf Rhododendron doesn't need any help. (In my experience Azaleas do need some help no matter how long they were established).

I do it (mulch close to the crown) as well. If you have no or few pests, it would cause few problems to keep the mulch close to the crown. If it is very cold or hot, the mulch would help with that. Pests to be on the look out for (because they could cause damage to the roots and some, to the base of the stems): moles, voles, shrews. Just monitor things in case you have pests and observe what issues may develop after you get the mulch close to the crown.

Where I am, one disadvantage of pine needle mulch (and to a smaller extent shredded leaf mulch) is that voles and chipmunks like to dig under it (far more than they would dig into bare ground or weed covered ground or under wood chips or under stone mulch).

My yard has a lot of voles and chipmunks and I've never seen any hint that either ever eats any of the live plants I care about. If I plant seeds outside, they (and birds) take almost all of them, so planting seeds doesn't work well.

I am worried the digging will damage the roots of shallow rooted plants, so I try to discourage it. They make a barely visible hole through pine needle (or shredded leaf mulch) and then create a path along the dirt/mulch boundary (just by crawling through it enough times that the mulch above holds that shape) to some spot where they do major digging under the mulch with no hint visible from the top.

The second best (but much easier) remedy I've found is used coffee grounds: I carefully lift off the mulch following the trail to where the digging has started, then spread coffee grounds where they were digging and along the trail. Then put the mulch back. They won't go back to the same trail or target location and usually won't go back to the same shrub. There is plenty of untended area under the pine trees on and adjacent to my property. If I discourage them enough in the tended areas, I think they move to where they do no harm.

The best material I found (rather than coffee grounds) is leaves cut from Lilly of the Valley. I have several areas in which I'm trying to remove Lilly of the Valley or cut off its natural expansion (from the beds where I want it). With some extra care, I can separate leaves from roots as I pull it (putting those roots under mulch of a shrub I want to protect would be a disaster). Then the leaves can be used for a month or two of effective discouragement for small animals. But that is a lot of effort. My family drinks a LOT of coffee, and we always save the used grounds, so I have enough to treat it as an almost unlimited resource for garden use (discourages slugs on my campanula as well as voles and chipmunks under shrubs).

Be careful with coffee grounds. My pooches loved the smell of coffee grounds! So much so that when they came back inside I could tell where they had been because they smelled of coffee or mint (elsewhere in the yard). I once caught them with their paws up in the air and their backs against the coffee that I had sprinkled in the ground. God, those baby girls!!! Hee, hee, hee. Reminded me of cats and catnip.

If any animal that visits my yard liked coffee grounds, I would know it by now. I have been using a lot of coffee grounds for several years with zero evidence that any animal likes it and some pretty clear evidence that the voles, chipmunks and rabbits dislike it. Rabbits don't dislike it enough that coffee grounds around the base of a plant discourage the rabbit from eating it. But coffee grounds pushed down multiple entrances to the same den will after a few tries get the rabbit to move elsewhere (sometimes out of my yard entirely). Dirt or rocks or sticks filling or aggressively blocking an entrance result in a new entrance overnight as near as physically possible to the blocked one. But coffee grounds filling an entrance make it give up on a wider area around that, ultimately giving up the whole den.

I hope the coffee grounds also supply nutrients to all the acid loving plants I grow. That is harder to determine by observing results. But at least there is no obvious harm to the plants from heavy use of coffee grounds.

I have had great success with deterring moles by using coffee grinds. We get them at Starbucks, or we used to before the Pandemic. They will give them to you for free.

I have pavers around my patio garden to keep my good soil in and try to keep the lawn grass out. It's not that big, but I have a bunch of things growing in that small space.

For several years I've been fighting the battle of the moles undermining all my plants. They have tunneled all over our yard, front and back, and sides. I didn't know what to do to keep them out so I thought that I would try to deter them with the grinds. Where they were tunneling in I placed some heavy flat bricks in a line and at the edge I dug a deep hole and filled it with grinds. I would say they were a quart deep.

It has worked. No more tunnels. Of course the mole went to the front yard and has totally excavated that space, but that is ok with me. The grass needed dethatching anyway.

I highly recommend the grinds if you want to deter the critters. I've been told that it is usually only one mole working the property, but there are lots of tunnels in my yard.

Oh, BTW, if you pile up mulch/bark around a tree it will die. I killed a Hickory tree by doing that and I just hated it. The rule of thumb is to allow at least 6 inches, but I would allow more if possible.

Thanks for all of your help! I pruned the vines and undergrowth away from the trunk and laid in some mulch -- just what I have available, not pine needle unfortunately. But far enough away from the trunk that we should be good. I also removed the thorns that were growing up it and pruned back the next door holly shrub, which I realized had gotten so over grown that it was shading the poor azalea. I bought azalea food (Miracle-Gro) which I confess I've never used before on this little guy. I'm sure he'll be right as rain shortly.

You seems to have three rocks on one side and one opposite defining the area "under" the shrub. Both visually and for the health of the shrub, I think that defined area is a bit small.
Probably you have done enough for now. If it were mine, I would wait till this fall (when pine needles are more easily available) and then move those rocks slightly further out and mulch a slightly bigger circle.