Girard's Crimson Azalea

Glossy greens with bright rosy reds! Welcome spring with a burst of juicy, fruit-punch-colored blooms with the Girard's Crimson Azalea (Rhododendron x 'Girard's Crimson') as it fills the mid-spring void with an explosion of blooms! Darker red spots, speckles, and blotches decorate each petal and add depth to the showy blooms and act like bullseyes for pollinators and Hummingbirds!

What's more, Girard's isn't content with just one flush of rosy-red flowers! After the mid-spring blooms, which just smother this plant, Girard's Azalea has a trick up their sleeves - surprise smaller flushes of blooms return periodically throughout the year!

Lush broad-leaved evergreen leaves are smooth and glossy while the dark-green color provides year-round color, even in the dreary months of winter! Girard's Crimson Azalea's lovely green hues are the perfect backdrop for its vibrant flowers! Making them really stand out!

Fall brings not just more flowers, but Girard's isn't done with their magic show yet either! Just as other plants are done for the year and ready to sleep for the winter, Girard's revs up for autumn with reddish and coppery fall color that tinges the glossy foliage through the colder parts of the year! This hardy Azalea is cold and heat-tolerant throughout USDA growing zones 5 to 8!

Planting and Application:

As always, this unexpected splash of color has a massive impact when a reblooming Girard's Crimson is planted in wide drifts or bold blocks of fruit punch-red! Girard's Crimson Azalea is sure to turn heads anywhere it is planted in the landscape! The bright colors and steady evergreen presence even make Girard's Crimson Azalea a stand-out specimen plant! Bursting at the seams with exciting energy!

Fill those bland, blasé areas with deep rose-red flowers and brilliant foliage year-round! Imagine Girard's planted with the sunny faces of your spring tulips and daffodils or adding that punch of color throughout your summer-blooming perennial garden while it still sleeps and dreams of warmer summer days! The spring ephemerals will appreciate the foliage for shade and cover once the summer's heat and sun kick in!

Pollinators too will flock to this welcome food source each spring, and throughout the year to grace your gardens with their whimsical presence. The repeat blooms keep the bees, butterflies and even hummingbirds migrating to your landscape over and over again! These are must-haves for the pollinator border, and the woodland garden where all will frolic in the dappled shade!

Loving the part shade to dappled sun locations, Girard's Crimson Azalea provides color to the shadowy areas in your landscape and enhances those problematic areas that are so difficult to plant in. Perfect in the shady front landscapes as foundation plantings, Girard's is absolutely inviting along shady walkways, and adds a vibrant pop of red and evergreen brilliance to Rock Gardens and mixed-shrub plantings, too.

Growing just 2-4 feet in height and 3-4 feet wide, Girard's Crimson Azalea is a compact and low-growing shrub, that can be trained even smaller. Perfect in containers and planters on porches and patios! Able to lend its brilliant hues to beds and borders and to hide the 'legs' of older, larger shrubs and evergreens as a facer plant and as edging. Lovely in Asian-inspired evergreen gardens and as a low, informal hedge for boosting privacy and curb appeal along your home's partly shaded foundation!

• Vibrant Pinkish-Red Blooms Smother the Entire Plant
• Bright Mid-Spring Flowers & Repeat Blooms All Growing Season!
• Evergreen Foliage For Color Year-Round!
• Lower, Compact Growth
• Red and Coppery Fall Color
• Bee, Butterfly & Hummingbird Friendly!

#ProPlantTips for Care:

Thriving in part-sun and the tricky north or east-facing exposures, Girard's Crimson Azalea will brighten those shady spots with welcome color! Preferring cool, consistently moist soil, Rhododendrons and Azaleas do best in many soil types so long as they don't sit in water. While not fussy about soil type, Girard's does need slightly acidic, well-draining conditions to really show off its best colors and character. Azaleas love cool soil with consistent moisture, and do their very best with a good, heavy application of mulch over the soil to help keep their roots cool and well-insulated from the summer heat.

Remember not to plant these shallow-rooted plants too deeply. Mound them up in a hill of extra soil, leaving an inch or two of the root ball showing, but covered and protected in arborist mulch chips. Being low and compact, Girard's will need very little care and fuss from yourself! No pruning is needed, but if you do wish to shape it or control size, pruning is best done immediately after Girard's is done with its spring bloom.

Fairly resistant to browsing Deer, and unbothered by rabbits or squirrels, pollinators, however, will be frequent visitors, plus all the admirers you'll have dropping by to take in the view!

• Partial Sun/Part-Shade Brilliance
• Cool Moist Root Conditions
• Needs Mulched, Well-Drained, Slightly Acidic Soil
• Rarely Needs Pruning - But Prune Only Right After Flowering
• Low-Maintenance and Low-Care

Girard's will easily fit in anywhere and brings on the color! You won't want to miss this stunning shrub in your garden next spring. Order a Girard's Crimson Azalea from Nature Hills Nursery today!