the heck with the bush.. what a brilliant paint choice ...

i would give it until the next bloom period .. and see how it over winters.. and reacts to it all ..

dont forget.. with no insult to the root mass.. there is a good chance it will regrow rather vigorously ... as much as a rhody might ... think in tree/shrub time ..

all that said .. and being on a corner lot.. i might not have a lot of patience with a 3 to 5 year rejuvenation project for all the world to see ... it kinda defeats the paint job ... if you are with me on that.. perhaps just get rid of it now.. as you note.. its planted only about 10 feet too close to the house ...

ken

Rhododendrons are one of the more common shrubs that will resprout from bare wood. Latent buds are present up and down the stems just under the bark and heavy pruning will typically stimulate these into growth. In my area, heavy pruning of leggy or overgrown rhodies is pretty common, often cutting them back to 6 or so inches from the ground. They regenerate easily from this treatment but not at all rapidly.......it's often several years before they start looking like a proper shrub again.

How well this sort of treatment might work in your much colder zone is not something I can comment on, nor is the timing for this practice :-) But you can move them and quite easily. They have a very shallow, pancake-like root system and are easy to pop out of the ground and relocate, although a big shrub may require an extra set of hands to do so. I would wait until spring if you wish to move it.

These are very easy to move, since it was jammed up against the house anyway move it to another spot, where it has more room (plant where the roots will always be in the shade). And let it come back on its own, without pruning - the more stems and foliage it has left at the renewal starting time the faster it will recover its original size. Also replacement of cut roots after transplanting is fueled by energy coming from stems and foliage.

In addition rhododendrons vary in their ability to come back from hard pruning, with some kinds not sprouting much after being cut down low.

keep in mind ... both offer advice from the very mild.. wet.. PNW ...'

i would bet odds in my z5 MI ... if moved.. it might not take winter ... and even if it did ... it might not survive next summer with no roots ... it simply would not be worth the extreme effort in my garden ...

how it might work in your zone.. is left to speculation ... ken

Yeah well what I can do is move it and see what happens...if it takes off, great! If not, well it’s just going to the place it was going to go initially anyway lol...now to find a replacement! Hahahahahaha...and thank you Ken on the compliment to the color..I saw this color and became obsessed! Had to have it! I was going to do a charcoal grey..but there was something about this blue that I needed to have! Haha

It you are going to move it this fall, do it today or tomorrow since we will be getting good rain early next week and that will give it a good amount of time to settle in before winter. Broadleafed evergreens like rhodies are the most difficult to move successfuly in autumn, though I have done it. First prepare the new site. Dig the shrub wide and shallow to get as many roots as possible and put on a tarp to pull to new site. Mulch well and water in to settle the soil around the roots. Having it a bit high if your soil isn't free-draining is a good idea, though not needed if you have good drainage in its new spot.

Ok I think I’m actually going to wait until spring, because one, my back is killing me from digging 6 holes for 6 trees already...and two, because I’d kind of like this Bush to survive if it could because idk what type of rhododendron it is, and I want the white flowers with dark leaves because it will look great with my house color. I’ve decided to put it on the other side of my house because that way I will flip the bush so the lush full side of the bush is showing, while the ugly hacked side will be facing something nobody can see...so it works out well.

IME, the hacked part will look fine in two years. Best to site it where it will be happy, and far enough from the house so it isn't likely to grow up against it again. IME many of the rhodies commonly found here can easily get to 15' x15', so once you have seen it bloom, you may be able to get an ID and some idea of size. Some things to think about: Is there as sight you would just as soon not see that this can block? Is there a spot with winter shade but summer sun? (That will make the rhody less likely to winter burn in particularly cold winters.)

I'd get rid of those ugly stubs. They define the pruning as a hack job like you described.

Babs, the rhody has white blooms. I know because this shrub has always bloomed every year since I bought the house..thing is, when I tried to research ‘white flowered rhododendrons’ there are many different types with the flowers all seeming to have a hint of yellow, or splotch of pink etc. They said it’s rare to have a completely white flower, yet I swear mine were completely white? But I have no pics of it when in bloom and idr if there were hints of other colors or not? So I have to wait for it to bloom again to get an idea. Now should I move in spring BEFORE it blooms, or after? Also the site I chose is an east facing site, that gets a lot of sun from the moment the sun rises, until about 2 pm..then it has some huge arborvitae shading it from the afternoon sun, along with protection from the winds. I’d put it about 8’ out from the foundation if I were to move it...any more than that, and it will look out of place.

So with all the grey and dreary happening outside, I’ve been longing to get in my yard again!! Boo hoo :’( so I’ve been looking through old posts and dreaming of color...lol! Which brought me back to this post...I’m wondering if there is a good temporary ‘screen’ plant that could help hide the eyesore left behind from having my rhodie hacked to bits?! Ideally I need to move the Rhodie..but actually getting my dh to take the time to help me do this is very slim lol...he works so often and in the rare free time he does have, I have plenty more projects for him to tackle....so I figured for now..maybe 1 season leave it be...but it’s still very ugly looking and I want something to hide it ASAP! Does anyone know of any good ideas I could do? I was thinking of a tall grass..but I feel it would look out of place? Then I thought of a trellis and have something climb it? But then thought anything that could climb it really fast, would likely be invasive and I nightmare to get rid of once I don’t need/want it anymore...so I figured I’d leave to the experts aka, you guys hahaha!

mid winter blues.. lol ...

if only you had got rid of it in fall ... we wouldnt be here.. eh??? .. lol ...

go buy one at bbs in spring.. and run out there.. and cut this one to 2 foot ... so you can dig it out in spring ....or see what happens ...

and to motivate you in that.. why dont you spend the rest of winter wondering if this one is starting to break upi the wonderful fieldstone foundation ...

mid winter blues in the great white north suk .. lol ... seasonal effective disorder ... turn on ALL the lights .... when its grey outside ....

dont blame hubby.. kill it.. and move on ... lifes too short ... lol .. how that for a pep talk ....

ken

As Embo said, they're easy to move. Move it where you said you wanted it. Not too late. I'm 74 and could easily move it and have it planted in less than half an hour.

Okay if it’s truly that easy, I guess I’ll suck it up and move it...it’s just going to look even worse gone because it hides an ugly part of my porch, so removing it will reveal the OTHER eyesore lol...which is the electric meter, the odd gap between the fence and the porch that seems to catch anything that blows around...the Rhodie always hid that which was another reason I thought maybe leave it? Is there another shrub, preferably evergreen, that grows fairly quickly that I could swap it with? That would preferably flower, and be enough to hide the other ugly eyesore I spoke of ...I know I’m a PITA...but yeah Ken, it’s likely the S.A.D. Kicking in lol

You can always just slide the rhodie out a ways so that it isn't against the house but hides the unsightly things you want hidden.

I don't (in fact can't) grow rhododendrons but what do people think about cutting the whole thing to the base, living with the stumps for a while and allowing it to regrow? Repeat every few years when it gets too big again. Until it was massacred it fulfilled all the criteria: evergreen, healthy, white flowers, which the OP wants.

Yeah, I likely will try to just move away from foundation more, but that still doesn’t solve the other problem which is what to do to screen the other eyesore that is the Rhodie while it recovers lol

Cutting it back is certainly an option. Rhodies will generally regenerate relatively willingly from almost a ground level 'stump'. But it will take several seasons before it looks like much of anything but a pruning mistake :-)) It is not something I would want to see in a very visually open location like a front foundation planting!!

You could plant tall perennials to hide the stumps for the couple of seasons it would take to regreen or use a large moveable container shrub. There appears to be plenty of empty space in the bed.

Any suggestions as far as what perennials or easy moving shrubs that would do the job?

I don't know your tastes or your climate.

Look around the neighbourhood or elsewhere in your garden for things which might be suitable.

I think what I’ll do is dig up the Rhodie pull it away from the house more and then spin it so the leafy side is facing front...this way it will solve multiple problems at once lol..getting it away from the foundation, hiding the hacked side of the Bush, AND hiding the ugly area by my porch lol ... simple right?! Yet it’s taken me me almost a year to figure it out LOL! ;p

You didn't mention the ugly area by your porch in the beginning, otherwise your problem would have been solved much earlier. I was a Landscape Contractor for almost 40 years and garden makeovers were a big percentage of my business. I moved a lot of plants over the years, especially rhododendrons. They do very well here in the coastal NW.

Well because I wasn’t really thinking about it, as much as I was thinking about my nice full Rhodie being destroyed and an now looking like an eyesore lol

My husband and I had a misunderstanding about pruning an old rhody in our foundation bed and he massacred it to literally a 5ft stick with a few leaves. Lol. That was summer before last. This spring, it looks good again and has gotten bushy enough to hide any signs of bad surgery. I almost cut it down when it happened because it looked so ridiculous. But I had too many other projects on the go. Now I’m glad I left it. Like yours it hides an eyesore spot near my front door.

I have several other rhodies in my lot which were poorly planted probably 50 years ago. I have to regularly trim them back to keep them in check and they always bounce back beautifully. Granted my climate is temperate.

Ok so I finally got around to spinning the rhodie...I just hope it doesn’t die from me doing something wrong potentially? I don’t seem to have luck with planting Azalea shrubs, as I’ve already killed 6 over the years! And only azaleas! I planted like instructed, and they never took...I think rhodies are in the same family as azalea so that’s where my fear of it dying comes in...now if it dies, it dies (shrug) but I’d rather it not...I’m going to post a pic and maybe one of you can tell me if it looks ok as far as the where the base meets the ground...I tried not to plant too deeply, but also had to make sure the roots were at least covered (the sun glare maybe makes it harder to see, if so I’ll grab a pic when the sun has moved a bit)

congrats on getting it done ...

not a great pic ...

but i think you should bring in some soil.. and create a moat ... so you can lay down some water.. and it will stay around the plant.. while it soaks in ...

its a HUGE transplant .... and you have to insure.. that the root mass .. stays MOIST ... thru the entire root mass ... not just some surface water that runs off ...

you will have to use a hand trowel... once in a while.. to check soil moisture down 3 or 6 inches ....

you will need to perfect watering for at least 2 years ... and perhaps drought in the third year ...

watering is the key to life ...

i dont know if i gave you this link before.. but check the section on proper watering ...

ken

https://sites.google.com/site/tnarboretum/Home/planting-a-tree-or-shrub

Thanks Ken, this area actually gets a lot of water, between the hose spicket that leaks like crazy when I have the hose hooked up, or the downspout that can't seem to stay in place lol, so when it rains it really gets some serious water...not like ‘floooding’ because the drainage is good..but this is def an area where lack water isn’t a problem...but I will make sure to keep checking to make sure the water is getting down deep enough.

Congrats on getting it moved! How far is it from the foundation now? I would do a bit of a ridge a couple of feet out as Ken suggested and then add a light layer of mulch to help keep moisture even. Do keep an eye on the moisture.

Fingers crossed!

Babs I’d say it’s about 6’ away from the foundation...well the center trunk is 6’ away...the branches are closer...but now it’s placed at an angle where most of the ugly stuff is hidden and it also has plenty of room for it to regrow! I won’t let it get out of control like it was (mind you I didn’t plant this the first time it was planted). And now that corner of the house has 3 different evergreen varieties to add interest but most importantly hide all my crap that ends up trapped behind there from the wind etc. ;p