Azaleas in Bloom- Nothing More Beautiful!

 

What a joy these days to pull into our driveway, greeted by gorgeous azaleas 🌺 in full glory! Pink, red, pinkish red, reddish pink, salmon, white- such a rainbow of colors. 

The view from our front porch is also a show stopper. Our azalea shrubs have been a harbinger of spring during the many years we have lived here. 

And it never gets old! 

In early March, some of the long-dormant shrubs came to life. I took this photo in our backyard on March 7. The first day of spring was still two weeks away. 

This was March 11 in the front yard. The buds are formed, soon to pop open like the flower on the right. 

A fun fact about azaleas is that there are a thousand varieties. That’s right: 1,000. So I have six or maybe eight different color types in my yard and there are, oh, 990 or so more types. Wow! 

There is an Azalea Society of America. Maybe I should join! 

Variants can appear within the same bush. In this image, the color Alesia calls salmon is predominant, but in the middle area are pink blooms. 

You see the two colors here. Note the buds in the middle. They should flower in the days ahead. 

A not-so-fun fact: azaleas are poisonous to humans and animals. So don’t eat them! And don’t keep them inside your home where pets might mess with them. 

Our neighbors on both sides also have lovely azaleas for all of us to enjoy this time of year.

Azaleas are celebrated around the Charleston area. Summerville this weekend is having its annual Flowertown Festival. Azaleas, wisteria and other spring beauties line the festival’s many arts, crafts and food booths (and trucks).

I wrote this post last spring about a church in Summerville that pops with azaleas. 

Cheers to the azalea, one of nature’s most beautiful plants. So many types, so many colors. It’s a shame their blooms don’t last longer. A few more weeks and they’ll drop to the ground, not to bloom again until next March. I’ll continue to admire them, for sure. 

We were wise back in the mid-to-late 1990s to plant many azaleas in our front and back yards. This photo is from 1997 (we moved here in 1995). Those may be small azalea plants in the pine straw bed on the right side. 

Decades later, the azalea shrubs are huge, and we’re so happy to have them. I can’t remember when or why our mailbox was moved from the right side of the driveway to the left side. The sego palms, planted 10 or more years ago, have done well too. Wish I could say the same for our lawn grass, ugh. 

White azaleas made a nice background for this March 2026 shot of us!