Quackin Grass Nursery

Azalea x 'Schroeder Salmon' (ex: Tom Horner) - A lovely summer blooming pink deciduous Schroeder Azalea / Rhododendron. Apparently lost to the trade until now. Many thanks to Tom Horner. We are pleased to offer it again. Florets are a pretty shade of salmon flirting with pastel. I find athe shade of many of the salmon-colored azaleas a bit cloying; not so with this cultivar. It is summer flowering - July, August into September. Flowers are deliciously fragrant. It's a complex hybrid with the following parentage: R. alabamensis x (R. serrlatum x prunifolium). The second cross was R arborescens x (R. serrulatum x prunifolium). So, what seemingly appears as a lovely species rhodie is anything but. Funny thing, when I first saw the pictures taken from a distance of the white and pink offerings, and when I was told they were very fragrant smelling of cloves and harboring zone 4 hardiness, my thoughts went to R. visosum as one of the parents... oops! Among the fine traits including fantastic fragrance, exceptional hardiness, a broad mounding habit and long summer flowering it is also low to no maintenance. Let these develop as they will not respond well to pruning. They will eventually eat some space so plant for it. A curious trait is that because the flowering season is late and long next years buds are forming while trusses are opening. One or more would be perfect back-of-the-border woodland plants, planted at the edge of the woods, a group set before deciduous or even evergreen trees in a park or on an estate or as specimens in a casual setting or as part of a hedgerow / screen. There is no appreciable fall color.

Dr. Henry Schroeder who developed this worthy deciduous Azalea hybrid originally offered it and its white and salmon counterparts at Holly Hills Nursery in Evansville, Indiana with his sons David and Stephen. None of the three hybrids have been named. The nursery is now closed. We're merely guessing at the southern growth boundary. It may be fully viable in zone 8, perhaps even into 9 but we just do not know. The cuttings came to us from long-established shrubs growing in the southeast Wisconsin where they have flowered exuberantly following especially cold USDA zone 4 winters. Full sun to part shade but definitely more sun than shade in mixed light. Perhaps a bit more shade will be required in more southerly locales but this is untested. Moisture retaining fertile, acid soil. Established potted rhodie from cutting.