‘Flame Creeper’ Azaleas: Virginia Historic Garden Week’s Hottest 2016 Azaleas

Summary: Bright, evergreen ‘Flame Creeper’ azaleas, the hottest 2016 azaleas and Virginia Historic Garden Week 2016’s iconic flower, are easy to grow and maintain.

Azalea 'Flame Creeper,' iconic flower of Garden Club of Virginia's Historic Garden Week 2016: Historic Garden Week in Virginia, via Facebook Feb. 23, 2016

‘Flame Creeper’ azaleas are the hottest 2016 azaleas and the iconic, versatile flowers of the Garden Club of Virginia’s 83rd annual Virginia Historic Garden Week 2016 of April 23 to April 30, 2016.

‘Flame Creeper’ azaleas become attractive reminders to set aside the last full week of every April for eight days of garden restoration and historic preservation tours. They constitute equally welcome reminiscences of what the Virginia Historic Garden Week 2016 guidebook calls “America’s largest open house” and the Commonwealth’s “oldest volunteer tourism project.” They do much more than fill exterior and interior gardening spaces with cheerful souvenirs of ventures into colonial and post-revolutionary mindsets toward landscape construction and cultivation. They embellish indoor and outdoor planned and wild garden habitat niches with low-maintenance, multifunctional plants whose survival and sustainability can be extended through microclimates and mulches.

The hottest 2016 azaleas easily fit into the equivalents of United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) hardiness zones five to 10 in terms of survival outside.

Organic mulches layered 2 to 3 inches (5.08 to 7.62 centimeters) high, warmer microclimates within climate zones and wind-shielded locations give ‘Flame Creeper’ azaleas greater hardiness. They help extend hardiness to lows well below zone 5’s range of minus 10 to minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23.3 to minus 28.8 degrees Celsius). Heat tolerance is unproblematic, except for the most extreme of severe weather and wind events, as long as drainage, moisture, mulch and shade are not compromised.

Inattentiveness to appropriate cultivation techniques and healthy growth requirements jeopardize the sustainable survival of ‘Flame Creeper’ azaleas in particular and non-woody and woody plants in general.

‘Flame Creeper’ azaleas, cultivar clones of Rhododendron indicum and interspecific hybrids, keep year-round foliage, with autumnal reds, springtime light greens and summery and wintery dark greens. Their branch end-clustered, cherry-red, coral-pink and orange-red, slightly ruffled, trumpet-shaped blooms and re-blooms, borne coupled or solitary, look bright for three seasons, from spring through autumn. The dense, multi-stemmed, open, slow-growing, upright shrub matures to the shape of a low-lying mound, 2.5 feet (0.76 meters) high and 3 feet (0.91 meters) across. Pruning need not be either extensive or frequent other than for removing damaged, diseased or dying shoots or for shaping immediately after the flowering season ends.

Cultivation-related challenges rarely occur when the hottest 2016 azaleas are planted in well-drained clay to sandy loams whose acidic soil pH ranges from 4.5 to 6.

Powdery mildew, treatable with fungicides, pesters azaleas when humidity reaches 95 percent whereas nutrient shortages such as chlorosis, treatable with supplemental iron, proliferates in alkaline soils. Azalea lacebugs, black vine weevils and sun scorch respectively qualify stressed ‘Flame Creeper’ azaleas for horticultural oil and insecticidal soap applications, imidacloprid treatments and pruning schedules.

Virginia Historic Garden Week’s hottest 2016 azaleas require daily morning sun and afternoon shade and granular, slow-release, spring-spread, well-balanced azalea/camellia fertilizers on east- or north-facing slopes. Heath family membership stresses inputs of ericaceous composts, fertilizers and mulches for outputs as rock or woodland groundcovers and hedges alongside allspices, hyssops, lilacs and spiraeas.

‘Flame Creeper’ azaleas turn Virginia Historic Garden Week’s hottest 2016 azaleas into memory-filled home gardens accentuating America’s largest open house’s past, present and future iconic flowers.

Hampton's Fort Monroe National Monument is on the cover of the 2016 Historic Garden Week Guidebook: Historic Garden Week in Virginia @HistoricGardenWeekinVA, via Facebook Nov. 4, 2015

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Garden Club of Virginia's Historic Garden Week 2016 iconic flower: Historic Garden Week in Virginia, via Facebook Feb. 23, 2016, @ https://www.facebook.com/HistoricGardenWeekinVA/photos/a.452111432862.245724.190385007862/10153973168317863/

Hampton's Fort Monroe National Monument is on the cover of the 2016 Historic Garden Week Guidebook: Historic Garden Week in Virginia @HistoricGardenWeekinVA, via Facebook Nov. 4, 2015, @ https://www.facebook.com/HistoricGardenWeekinVA/posts/10153733744667863

For further information:

Culpeper Media Network. "Virginia Historic Garden Week." YouTube. April 22, 2016.
Available @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuGUOajXNdk

Garden Club of Virginia. “Historic Garden Week April 23-30, 2016, Guidebook.” Garden Club of Virginia > Historic Garden Week > Tour Guidebook > 2016 HGW Guidebook.
Available @ http://www.vagardenweek.org/warehouse/fm/documents/HGW%202016%20Pressroom/2016_HGW_Guidebook.pdf

Historic Garden Week in Virginia @HistoricGardenWeekinVA. 4 November 2015. "Take a behind the scenes look at our 2016 guidebook cover photoshoot. Be sure to wait until the end for the big reveal!" Facebook.
Available @ https://www.facebook.com/HistoricGardenWeekinVA/posts/10153733744667863