refresh our memory.. where are you ...

life is all in those buds .... you have to wait and see how they bloom and leaf out ...

frankly ... they look like a lot of mine after a bad MI winter .... and they usually pop back ..

i agree the last one doesnt look good in any sense ... but i the pic is a bit far away to see any buds ...

how bad or out of ordinary was your winter ....

and yes.. protecting them MIGHT have helped.. but maybe not ... i think i would have done it mostly for a year or two after transplanting ... but then.. quit doing it ... it might not hurt to do it this fall ... in other words.. they were stressed from planting.. so a little help over winter wouldnt have hurt ....

start with a good layer of mulch .... winter sun can hit dark soil.. and warm it in winter.. and that isnt good... if it gets too warm ...

ken

2 of them are z6 ... did your otherwise z6 actually hit a z5 this winter????

Well, my zone info is no longer showing on my name. Will have to figure out why. Ken, I'm in Maine and the boundary between 5 and 6 is probably spitting distance from my house (if I was an amazing Olympic spitter). OK, not spitting distance, but definitely just up the road. The big problem at my place is the occasional wind off the water. Winter winds are from the North a huge majority of the time, and we are very protected from those. But, if the occasional winter wind comes from the south, watch out, Nelly.

I would consider this a zone 6 winter. We didn't get that cold, and zone 6a is rated to -5 F. We didn't have that kind of winter this year. It might have gotten than cold, but not for anywhere near long enough to actually reach the root of plants. Maybe a couple winter nights where the temp dipped for a short time to that level before things warmed up again--maybe. Interestingly enough, the Blaauw's pink in the bottom picture has no mulch, but the other two are heavily mulched and they look worse. They should also be much more protected from both north and south winds. Go figure.

My zone info beside my name is showing for me now. Can you see it?

I have no idea, Deanna, but am keeping my fingers crossed for you.

Grateful for my alkaline soil as I am fairly certain I would have fallen down an endless rabbit-hole of species rhodies (cinnabarinum, obtusum et al). The most iconic plants of my northern childhood.

Northern childhood? Are you Scottish, or from an area near Scotland? I was FLOORED to learn last year that a rhodie could be invasive. It is sad.

But, I am in a similar boat because my rabbit hole is fairly shallow given my zone. Most of them like warmer climates. (Huff puff and spit, just like an angry hedgehog.) My choices are limited, but I am going to try my hardest, and for more than one year, with some of them, like Percy Wiseman.

I am thrilled with my ZONE 4 (YEA!!) Mt. St. Helens Azalea. This is it last year. Isn't is amazing? The tricolor buds of yellow, pink, and orange are stunning under close inspection. It will have lovely blooms this year, except for the stems that were deer-munched per this morning's inspection. >:-(

Those shrubs do not look good and I fear for any viability with the azalea at all. Hopefully one of the R&A gurus here, akamainegrower (who must be a neighbor of some sort!), will pop in to give his advice as he has tons of experience growing these plants in your area/climate.

The damaged leaves on the rhodies will remain looking like that until they fall off. In my area, this would be a pruning job, cutting back until the damaged foliage was removed. But these are not yet very mature shrubs and enough pruning to clean them up wouldn't leave you with much :-( They should rebound and regrow from a hard prune but it will take some time and the process may leave a rather ugly and disfigured looking plant in a conspicuous location until the regrowth fills in.

For a zone pushing BLE that is exposed to winter winds, protection is a requirement. Otherwise you will be looking at similar disfigurement every winter.

I think the ugliness after pruning doesn't bother me right now. My biggest concern is in the life processes of the plant. I am assuming that the first photo (Cherry Cheesecake) can't photosynthesize inside the wind-burned leaves, so pruning might be in order to expose the lower leaves to sunlight. Thoughts?

You are thinking in the right direction :-) I'd take the two branches on the left side of the plant down to clear foliage. The right side dosn't look so bad. I might leave that....or just snip off a few of the worst looking leaves.

Green is always a good sign...don’t give up hope!

I would not prune the rhodies. They likely still have viable buds and will be a bit homely until the damaged leaves fall off, bit if you prune, the shrub will have to form new buds, so it will lose a chunk of the growing season. On July 4 or thereabouts, pull off any damaged leaves remaining, but mostly I find they drop before then. I have not had good luck with evergreen azaleas, even the few that should be hardy here. I don’t think that the leaves are leathery enough to withstand our winter cold and dryness.

Wow, akamainegrower. I learned a great deal from your post. Very sad to hear of the damage. Losing one-year-old bushes, not so bad. Losing mature beauties, bad. All the huge old grande dames on my property look good...so far. They're probably mostly Nova Zembla. They are just feet from these smaller ones, but within that feet are some wind breaks.

I'll wait until after flowering to cut away foliage. I doubt I'll give Blauuw's Pink a second chance, but I'll keep trying with Percy Wiseman. The Cherry Cheesecake will probably be moved to a very protected area at the house foundation. It should do much better in years to come out of the wind tunnel.

akamainegrower, have you listed your favorites in another post I could reference? Would love to learn from your experience!

Very interesting post, amainegrower. Despite the depredarions of ponticum, I remain a loyal rhodie lover. No, I am not Scottish, Deanna but from the industrial north-west, which, like many urban conurbations, had a terrific network of parks and recreation spaces left over from Victorian philanthropy. An apprenticeship in one of the great parks was once a brilliant introduction into professional horticulture. My own local parks (Victoria and Werneth) had fantastic glasshouses, gardens, observatories, art museums, sculptures, boating lakes...and a truly fabulous collection of rhodies...all freely available for the enjoyment of the public (although the 'parkies' were authoritarian figures of fearful repute - best avoided).

No such place exists in my current home city, despite it's obvious wealth...although we do have a botanical garden but only accessible at a price. The post-war optimism has simply been crushed by austerity, cost-cutting and a diminished public sector. The opulent gardens of my youth are, I fear, barren and unloved city spaces deemed unworthy of investment as we sail ever further from the shores of civic pride, investment in children, protection of public spaces. What was once freely available are now the preserves of the paying customer and self-serving, wilfully blind political forces.

UPDATE: All my 'Blaauw's Pink' are either dead or have a few viable leaves. A couple Percy Wiseman's are barely hanging in there. But, many of the others show more hope. Some might actually survive. Below are two examples of types of recovery. The first is Rosebud (I think--I forget what the tag said). It is absolutely more what my "iffy" ones look like. The second is Cherry Cheesecake. It has nice new growth but only one bud, which has not opened.

V.pleased for you, Deanna. We gardeners tend walk an unreliable path between success/fail. We don't march happily along, in the middle of the road - nope, we cling, hopefully to the precarious edges (which have the best view).

I'm zone 6, but our winters vary between cold and open, cold and snowy, solid 6, sometimes 5. New England, in other words.

Percy Wiseman

Such a beautiful plant and from your experience and mine, so vulnerable. Mine is in its 5 th season of winter dieback. I get just enough blossoms each spring to remind me how beautiful it would be if only......

I was finally going to move mine to more "protected" location. Now I question whether its the location or its inherent vulnerability that causes the browning out of a 1/3 of its branches every year.

I remember the first time I saw him, I marveled at the peachy pink coloration. Really just stood and gawked. I m going to drive by that house again and see what shape he's in this season.

Thanks, all, for your various and very interesting contributions.

I hadn't been on GW in a half a year. This short thread is GW at its best/

Marie

I agree, Marie, about PWs beauty. I adore the blend of peachy cream and pink with the deeper pink of the unopened buds. In fact, my PW is my profile pic! Our local Y has two large ones, I believe, against their foundation and they are thriving. I just took out a long line of awful standard Euonymus fortunei, wintercreeper, from against our north facing foundation bed. It is 100% wind protected and gets good morning sun. I will be moving then there. I think they should to be placed close to walkways so they can be adored. Some plants are beautiful from afar, but PW deserves to be appreciated close up. Fingers crossed!

Camp, just saw a quote on another thread that I love, “Gardening is the triumph of optimism over reality.” We do cling precariously to those edges!

I have to take back my insults to Blaauw's Pink. This one looked nearly completely dead. In fact, I was so sure it was dead I hadn't even bothered to really check on it. Imagine my surprise when I finally noticed it recently. I can't believe the foliage on it. I'm thinking that our extra rain and cool temps gave all the suffering rhodies/azaleas tender loving healing time, like being in the plant ICU ward. Really astonished at the recovery. They will be protected this winter!