i wish i could grow As that size in MI ... i think they look fine ...

and i suspect the TINY bare spots in the middle of the plants.. will fill in with with this springs growth ...

personally.. i would leave them alone ...

ken

Do you have a result in mind (shape/size/form) that you want to end up with?

Hi Yardvaark--you know, probably like a generally roundish natural shape, no sharp lines or anything like that, but fuller than they are now and without the wild longer pieces.

Pretty much all familiar evergreen azaleas except the 'Gumpo' cultivars grow like that. And the ones in your shots look more dense than a lot of other selections do. At least during the winter. So I wouldn't mess with them - if you find them too large at some point, which they seem to be on their way to becoming they can be easily transplanted to a less hemmed in position.

If you shear it, it will immediately look sheared. However, it will shortly thereafter break out with new growth and as that growth comes to final size, the look, again, will be loose and natural looking. But the shape will be as a mound if that's the shape you sheared it into. To have this shapely but soft look, it can only be shaped once per year, best done immediately after flowering. (By contrast, to keep a sheared look, one would re-shear after every growth spurt.)

Ok that's helpful. So what I've been doing is waiting until after the spring flowering to prune. But I'm not sure that I'm not waiting too long because the growth may happen prior to that. Normally I would trim or prune a shrub in the winter. Dhould I be doing that with these even if it means fewer blooms? I can certainly live with that if it's only going to be once every couple of years that I do a pretty like that.

Sorry, my goof. On non-flowering shrubs is before Spring growth spurt. On Spring flowering, it is immediately after. DON'T prune in winter or before the flowering. I amended my answer above so as not to cause confusion.

Azaleas - prune after bloom and before June. (at least in NC!..Don't know if this applies to the rebloomers). Anywhere you want it bushier, just trim at the long part. Where ever you trim, the plant will respond by growing a trio of branches from there.Also anywhere there is a break in the stem, most times it will sprout there. Sometimes it takes a couple of years to get them dense.

I had an azalea bush that was terribly lanky at a previous house, and then it got squashed by a huge pine branch after a storm. Poor thing, It was completely flattened. Every single branch had about 4-5 partial breaks in it and or was completely broken off. I thought, well, we'll see what happens, but its probably done for...well guess what. Later that year, everyone of those breaks sprouted and it became the prettiest azalea of them all...

I love it. Plants helping plants. :-)

https://goodgardeningvideos.org/videos/how-to-prune-azaleas/

So Jean, are you saying basically I can clip it at any point and it'll grow the three new branches from that part? That's the kind of response I'm used to with plants, but I don't know why I had my doubts these azaleas did that too.

Tigereye, thanks for the video. I wish she would've shown a close-up of where she was cutting. I'm imagining she cut deeper in the plant but along a stem, not flush with the main trunk, which seems like it wouldn't generate new growth. Is that how you understood it? Somewhere along an internal part of the branch?

Yup. Hope this drawing makes sense:

From the azalea pruning video; "Grab the branch that is sticking up with your left hand. You don't cut it off to the size (height) you want it to be, you reach down to a side branch and snip it off."

Also, look at these videos.

https://www.greenbeltonline.org/pruning/

After looking at them, there are several more links for different types of pruning. That is where I found the azalea one.

Ooh that's super helpful...I might get daring and creative and try those little breaks too. Thanks, Jean--and everyone!

You can even make evergreen azaleas into topiary, as is done in traditional Japanese gardens where they are sheared to resemble rocks. But any treatment that alters the growth of an azalea, even when less intense than this close shearing will be changing its natural appearance. A natural appearance that the plant will immediately try to restore with every flush of growth it makes after the pruning. So if you start in on yours now you will be committing to an annual routine that goes on indefinately, if you are not to soon lose the appearance you have created.

I sometimes prune the leggy branches back by making the cut below the surface. The bigger the stem, the deeper the cut so when the branchlets grow out they will be the same length as the normal new growth. A little practice and you can get the even outline you want. I like to just let them go and find their own canopy.