White Nobility ReBLOOM® Azalea

Wise gardeners understand the unique power of white flowers in the garden. Colors are great, but on cloudy days, in the early evening, and at any time in shade, nothing beats white for brightening every part of your garden. It glows in darker conditions, where other colors simply fade away, so white flowered shrubs that thrive in shade are especially valued by those in the know. If that shrub will also bloom not just once a year, but again and again, for weeks at a time, then we are looking at true garden aristocrats, and the White Nobility™ ReBLOOM™ Azalea is just such a plant.

The White Nobility ReBLOOM Azalea is new variety of evergreen azalea the blooms not just in spring, but has scattered blooms in summer, and returns in late summer and fall for a complete reblooming. It grows rapidly into a broad, dense, spreading shrub, 2½ to 3 feet tall, with a spread of 3 to 4 feet. This magnificent plant will fill large areas of the garden, such as around your home, or out in garden beds. It can be grown in the foreground of larger beds, and in the middle of smaller ones. In small gardens just one plant will bring interest and brightness for most of the year. It thrives in woodlands and in the shade beneath large deciduous trees – exactly the shady spots where white stands out best and has the greatest impact. The elliptical leaves are rich green, and a little less than 2 inches long. They are truly evergreen, keeping this bush fresh and green through the coldest times of the year.

In April and May the first blooms of the White Nobility ReBLOOM Azalea appear, in such profusion that they obscure the leaves almost completely. The single flowers have 5 ruffled petals forming an open cup, and they are 2½ inches across. They are in clusters of 3 or 4 at the ends of all the branches, and they bloom in succession, each flower lasting a week. The result is several weeks of profuse bloom at the high point of the spring season. That alone would be enough to earn any shrub this beautiful a place in your garden, but things are only just getting started. After a brief pause in June, by July scattered blooms have come back. As late summer arrives, and into fall, the plant returns to full bloom, with a show that keeps going until the first frost, or the end of October.

Unlike other reblooming azaleas, the White Nobility ReBLOOM Azalea is completely hardy in zone 6 – a breakthrough for gardeners in that zone. It is happy in warmer zones too, of course. In zone 6 a spot in full sun is fine, but in warmer zones there should be some afternoon shade. In all zones it will grow well, and bloom profusely, in partial shade or light full shade. A place in the dappled shade of a woodland area will suit it perfectly. So will the shade beneath a large shade tree on a lawn, or at the base of a north-facing wall or fence. It grows best in moist, well-drained soil that has a pH below 6.0 – acidic soil is needed for healthy growth. If you don’t have that kind of soil the easy solution is to grow this plant in a planter box or pot. Use potting soil and fertilizers for acid-loving plants. Make sure your pot has drainage holes, and water regularly, when the top ½ inch of the soil has dried. This plant thrives for years in pots, and you can adjust its location to give it the best possible light conditions, and to show it off during the months it is in bloom. This plant normally has no pests or diseases, and deer as well as rabbits normally ignore it. No trimming or clipping is needed to maintain its neat dome-like shape, and if the soil and light are good, little else is needed.

It took 15 years of complex plant breeding and selection to create the White Nobility ReBLOOM Azalea. In 1996 Robert Head, a plant breeder from Seneca, North Carolina, made many cross-pollinations between different azalea plants. One such cross was between an orange-pink azalea called ‘September Song’ and an earlier hybrid seedling he had created. Among the seedlings that grew was one that stood out, with pure white blossoms, and a reblooming habit. In all Robert found just 9 reblooming plants among 80,000 seedlings he grew from his various crosses. These became the ReBLOOM Azalea series. The only white flowering plant in the series is ‘RLH1-15P3’, patented in 2014 after years of trials. It is marketed with the trade name White Nobility™ and distributed under license as part of the Garden Debut® collection of the Greenleaf Nursery Company. This unique plant will really bring your garden to life as nothing else can, and once you discover the power of white flowers to brighten your garden you will be amazed. Order now, though, because this amazing plant will be gone very, very soon.