Sweet Azalea

Fragrant white flowers with red stamens open in early summer, later than nearly every other azalea, and the scent carries across a garden. Rhododendron arborescens is a native deciduous azalea growing 8 to 20 feet tall and wide in full sun to part sun, hardy from Zone 4 through Zone 7. The late bloom is what makes it useful. By the time this flowers, the spring azaleas are done and the summer shrubs have not started. Hummingbirds come to the flowers, along with bees and butterflies. This gets large, up to twenty feet in good conditions, so treat it as a small tree at the back of a planting rather than a border shrub. It grows wild along mountain streams and in moist woods, handles wet ground, and needs acidic soil, roughly pH 4.5 to 6.0. Fall foliage turns red to purple.