Bill Spohn wrote:

Where I live, rhodies and azaleas are so
ubiquitous as to be boring in the extreme. They offer an extremely short
bloom season, then sit as dull green lumps for the other 11+ months of the
year.

With a bit of study you can come up with a rhodo based garden that starts in
January and ends in August!

But unless you are a rhody collector, why would you want to? Why limit yourself to
one plant family when there are scores of others that will offer a much more
expanded range of interest - foliage color and texture, other flower forms, winter
berries or stem color, midsummer or late winter fragrance, fall foliage color,
wildlife attraction, etc., etc., etc. And even though one can indeed find species
of rhodies that will offer blooms outside of the normal April-May-June period, they
too have a short bloom period, leaving only the green (mostly) foliage to remain
for the rest of the year.

But you are correct - if you just stick in whatever is usually available at the
garden centre, you will have a pretty narrow bloom time, and unless the foliage
on the rhodos you choose is pretty interesting (some are), you better
interplant with things that spread the blooms later in the year.

Indeed. But some "landscaping" outfits (and I say that very generously) suffer from
an acute lack of imagination and/or miserly pocketbook and opt out for the limited,
ordinary, cheap and boring.

pam - gardengal