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I have a line of rhododendrons growing in my right side yard, which is not very deep (maybe 16-18' to my right-side property line, but luckily the setback for side yards in my neighborhood is only 5'). I had a pellet shed installed in my side yard with maybe 8-10' between its left side and the right side of my garage (that is clearance space for my riding mower).
At the far left of the picture below, you can see the right side of the shed (it's 20' wide by 10' deep); there's maybe 6' before the rhodies start (my contractors cleared the space for the shed before the shed guys came; the contractors had to remove one of the rhodies and I wish I'd asked them to take a 2nd as well).
^^^ In the picture you can also see clear space in front of the rhodies -- there's about 6' of space in front of them before you get to the right side of my driveway (looking at my house from the street) -- and the rhody line itself is in maybe 6' in from the street. I will be planting flowers in that clear space in front of the rhodies -- will prepare the small bed this year (about 3' deep by the width of the rhody line), just putting potted plants on top over the prep materials, and I'll plant next year). In front of the clear space you see pine tree branches that my contractors cut down when they were doing the shed site prep -- I have been cutting them down further (so they'll fit in my car) and taking them to the dump with maybe 3-4 more trips needed! (You can see all the pine trees in back -- they are all around the perimeter of my 1.29-acre property. The nature setting is one HUGE reason I bought this house!)
So: what is a line of rhododendrons SUPPOSED to look like? And how do I get mine to look like that?! I do like them when they bloom but I guess I don't really understand the appeal of rhodies since in my area at least (southwest New Hampshire, zone 5b), they are in bloom for maybe 2 weeks a year.
Rhodies grow fast and yours are overgrown and need to be pruned and thinned out.
How tall are they approximately? When you're standing right next to them can you see over the tops of them or are they a lot taller than you?
Can you tell how many individual plants are there, and how long is the row of them from one end to the other?
Do you want them to look like a compact row of short shrubs that are fully foliaged from the ground up...... or do you want them to look like individual short trees with spaces to walk between them and with the lower trunks exposed and no branches growing on the bottoms of the trunks so there is plenty of ground clearance below the trees suitable for putting a flower bed beneath them?
Are you going to do the clean up work on them yourself or are you thinking of hiring somebody to do the work for you?
When I first moved to this place 10 years ago I was confronted with two long rows of messy overgrown rhodies that looked exactly like yours do now, one row of 4 in the front of the building and one row of 5 in the back. I pruned and tidied them up myself with hand tools and they look okay now. The front row looks like short compact shrubs that I can see over top of and the back row looks like individual, taller trees (around 8 feet tall with space to walk between and under them. Tomorrow I'll see if I can try to post pictures of what the two rows look like right now.
I have a line of rhododendrons growing in my right side yard, which is not very deep (maybe 16-18' to my right-side property line, but luckily the setback for side yards in my neighborhood is only 5'). I had a pellet shed installed in my side yard with maybe 8-10' between its left side and the right side of my garage (that is clearance space for my riding mower).
At the far left of the picture below, you can see the right side of the shed (it's 20' wide by 10' deep); there's maybe 6' before the rhodies start (my contractors cleared the space for the shed before the shed guys came; the contractors had to remove one of the rhodies and I wish I'd asked them to take a 2nd as well).
^^^ In the picture you can also see clear space in front of the rhodies -- there's about 6' of space in front of them before you get to the right side of my driveway (looking at my house from the street) -- and the rhody line itself is in maybe 6' in from the street. I will be planting flowers in that clear space in front of the rhodies -- will prepare the small bed this year (about 3' deep by the width of the rhody line), just putting potted plants on top over the prep materials, and I'll plant next year). In front of the clear space you see pine tree branches that my contractors cut down when they were doing the shed site prep -- I have been cutting them down further (so they'll fit in my car) and taking them to the dump with maybe 3-4 more trips needed! (You can see all the pine trees in back -- they are all around the perimeter of my 1.29-acre property. The nature setting is one HUGE reason I bought this house!)
So: what is a line of rhododendrons SUPPOSED to look like? And how do I get mine to look like that?! I do like them when they bloom but I guess I don't really understand the appeal of rhodies since in my area at least (southwest New Hampshire, zone 5b), they are in bloom for maybe 2 weeks a year.
Suggestions welcome!
The appeal of rhododendrons:
- the are evergreen screen
- they mark your property line with very little maintenance needed
- they are fallen leaves storage, which would become mulch over the winter and spring so you don’t have to haul it to the dump.
- they emit chemical into the soil which prevents other plants growing under them - sort of like a natural “border control†- could be perfect to have them to keep the forest encroaching on your property from the other side of rhododendrons
Let me be blunt: your idea of a bed of flowers in front of rhododendrons is futile.
I don’t think it would even look good from a design standpoint- too busy, messy, busy structure, like a an unnecessary bow on an odd dress
You sound like a happy urbanite with the dreams of a cottage in the woods surrounded by blooming flowers - isn’t going to happen without mind boggling effort and tons of cash.
If you are unhappy about short period of rhododendrons blooms - how long do you think the blooms in your flower bed would last?
Unless you are considering the annuals -tropical which bloom non-stop if provided with the food, sun and water, but would keep your bed bare for 8-9 months of the year - most perennials only bloom around 2 weeks
Sure, you could plant a variety, which will provide some bloom continuously- but what an unsustainable maintenance nightmare- weeding, mulching, watering and feeding, subdividing that perennials need every 2-3 years to keep looking good.
Your flower bed would become a fertile ground for all kind of woody vines you have to fight by digging their roots - damaging your perennials - I can go on and on.
Keep rhododendrons, perhaps prune off just the lowest branches clear to the trunks 8†-12†off the ground - so it perhaps could be used to shove fallen leaves under them in fall so they become handy mulch? Or that at least you don’t have to haul it to the woods or dump?
If you see dead or crossing branches saw them off with the pruning saw when you have a chance.
Keep the grass up to the line of rhododendrons- just mow to prevent brambles, briers, oriental bittersweet, multi flora rose, wine berry, porcelain berries, wild grapes, Japanese knotweed, etc to take hold of your front yard and add seeds every fall to your lawn to keep it thick.
Mowing the lawn is the easiest way to keep the property neat and from going wild and full of invasives
You may need to lime the front yard for 2-3 years to reduce the most likely high acidity of your soil which is detrimental to your lawn.
Educate yourself first, perhaps some sturdy iron-proof shrubs may provide some blooms - but it is still 2-3 weeks only, they are mostly non-native and act as plastic front yard decor to your wildlife: they are there - but useless to them.
Look up the image for “hügelkultur†- that what you should be doing with your pine branches instead of what you are doing and filling up the dump.
People should get off their high horses being against the lawn: there is a reason for its existence on the wet East Coast.
The same as succulents and gravel mulch/rock gardens in the SW.
The key is to learn how to keep the lawn healthy and lush without too much input - sustainable.
If you insist:
you could cut ALL the branches off of your rhododendron you had regret for not removing - leaving just 8-12†of the bare trunk. Do it now.
You need a sharp pruning saw- wear a mask against saw dust.
The green branches will pop up and it will become a much shorter green shrub by the end of this season with soft branches instead of thick ones for which you need a pruning saw - which will be easier to keep in the shape and size you prefer with just small pruners - but you must then do it regularly right after blooms so you could still get flowers for the next year and to keep it the size more or less you want.
If you want to add this chore to the list of your others.
You live in the woods? Be the woods
Last edited by L00k4ward; 05-10-2023 at 04:32 AM..
I don't really understand the appeal of rhodies since in my area at least (southwest New Hampshire, zone 5b), they are in bloom for maybe 2 weeks a year.
I think its a little more than 2 weeks but I totally agree! They aren't the best looking shrub when not in bloom but I do love their blooms.
What is your plan with that space?
How about doing something like this? Prune them into these shapes and leave a gap between them.
Prune AFTER it blooms
Find the main trunks first and figure out how many actually plants there are. Put a marker in front of the plant so you can sketch a design
Personally I would follow Zoisite, as she is always full of great ideas. FWIW, I would just do a little neatening up by trimming the bottom a little and prune off some of the top and sides a little and leave it as is otherwise. I love that look for where you are and your surroundings. It would look awful here, because we are a group of 115 homes, but given the woods that you have, I actually prefer the more natural look.
Okay, this afternoon I took some pictures of the ones I worked on in the front and back of my building. I trimmed off all the lower branches on the trunks so for the front shrubs there is 3 feet of clearance from the ground to the rhodie foliage above, and in the back of the building the rhodies are taller, less shrub-like and more thinned out with about 4 & 1/2 feet of clearance from ground to foliage.
There are two groups of 4 shrubs in the front of the building flanking each side of the entrance walkway. The group of 4 on the left are 5 feet tall and the group of 4 on right are 6 feet tall. I don't let them get any taller than that. Sometimes I trim the tops to make them about 18 inches shorter. But prefer to keep them tall enough to make a good wind break during winter. There are chickadees nesting in them too.
The trees in the back by the parking area are in a straight row and they are around 8 to 9 feet tall. I pruned and thinned them drastically at first so that I could walk between them and under them. The reason for doing that was for visibility at night for security reasons for the residents, visitors and home care staff (it's an independent living seniors residence high rise tower with lots of people coming and going).
I have created flower beds directly under all of the groups of rhodies on the property and they are all doing fine. The rhodies shown are not the only ones, there are 3 others in a group at the north side of the building that are between 15 to 20 feet tall).
The plants that are in the flower beds under all of the rhodies are all perennials and include a variety of tulips, daffodils, narcissus, rosey echinacea (cone flower) rose campion, yellow celandine poppies, yarrow, pieris, pineapple lilies, shasta daisies, feral oregano, blue bells, blue anemone, bleeding hearts, perennial pansies, snapdragons, crocuses, primulas, tiger lilies, pink Asiatic lilies, roses, foxglove, alyssum, black eyed Susans, snowdrops and (not perennials) - lobelia and nemesia. And probably a few more I'm not remembering at the moment. They're all seasonal plants so they're coming up according to time of year - spring, summer and fall - so you won't see all of the ones in the front or back. Some of them have already finished blooming and some are just starting to come up.
The first two pictures are of the two groups in the front flanking the front entrance walkway and the last two pictures are of the same group of trees at the back entrance, taken from different angles and sunlight conditions. You can't see them very well but behind the back row of rhodie trees there are also 4 short holly shrubs (5 feet tall) with a clear walking path between the hollies and the rhodies.
If you click on the thumbnails and then click again on each picture that comes up it will show the zoom symbol, click on that and it will enlarge the pictures for a better view.
The hand tools I used to clean up the rhodies were hand secateurs, long handled lopping shears and a little folding pruning saw.
Personally, I would leave them the way they are. I like native plants in a natural state. Trimming them like boxwood, or manipulating them into little balls, is wrong as far as I am concerned
Of course there is also one final option if you see no attraction or use for them and they're in the way and you have other uses for the space they're presently taking up. That's to hire a crew with the necessary equipment to come cut them all off at ground level, put them through a wood chipper, then take a stump grinder to the roots and then they will haul away all the debris in a trailer. All you will be left with is a clear space with some residual sawdust on the ground.
Personally, I would leave them the way they are. I like native plants in a natural state. Trimming them like boxwood, or manipulating them into little balls, is wrong as far as I am concerned
There was a time I would have killed for a stand of rhododendrons like that.
As stated above, just prune them to keep them in line, they are a free growing plant and pruning them too hard just makes them an ancillary victim related to crape murder.
Personally, I would leave them the way they are. I like native plants in a natural state. Trimming them like boxwood, or manipulating them into little balls, is wrong as far as I am concerned
Ordinarily I'd agree with you on that about lots of other species of plants.
However, the OP's rhodos aren't a naturalized nor native species of North America, hers are a foreign introduced hybrid ornamental cultivar that somebody planted there. They have been bred to naturally grow into really, really huge round balls if they aren't kept in check. That is what the OP's rhodos are starting to do, they've met and grown together and will grow into a single big invasive ball. They need to be kept in check or else they'll eventually take over as an impenetrable giant ball that fills in the entire space in the yard where they were planted.
Also, just so you know, it's not at all possible with rhodos of any type or origin for anyone to be able to trim them like boxwood, and they can't be manipulated into little balls. Some cultivars can be bonsaied though.
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