The Mitcheldean Garden 2025
Ericaceous Kings and Queens

This page is part of a series of garden blogs from 2025. Click here for the index.

Unlike the Cotswolds on the east side of the River Severn which are alkaline limestone, our hills have an acid or neutral base with an ericaceous soil, ideal for growing the shrubs seen in the first 2025 blog.

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Azaleas and rhododendrons are similar shrubs, azaleas being a sub group of rhododendrons and generally smaller. We have quite a few spread all over our garden, I believe just two (one of each) was present when we moved in. 

Yuehong is standing at the bottom of our rockery. It is also home to a not very attractive small tree which is a pain to cut back each year, an acer which will have a week of glory come the autumn and a Pieris fire plant. The baby azalea lives at the top of our main steps along with many others, all slow growing but not all trouble free like this one.

The pair on the left below are part of the line of azaleas in front of the house, traditionally they are early bloomers.. Many of them have an unpleasant growth and we think they would rather be on an inclined area. The attractive orange azalea is the most successful of the four we have planted and is in our main rockery, unusually they are deciduous. 

Next to the orange azalea is a purple one, the rockery is gradually being taken over by them. The small pinky-purple one was finding life difficult being threatened by invasive weeds near the summer house, so I recently moved it to the main rockery, that's a white azalea next to it.

These are two more azaleas in the rockery, we have two yellow ones here but they are not yet big enough to flower reliably.

There is a rockery style bed just below the summer house where I have introduced some azaleas. Unfortunately it has been invaded by bindweed, other weeds and a honeysuckle behind, while attractive, is constantly trying to invade the space reserved for azaleas. Unfortunately, against my advice, someone insisted on putting a peony here and while it is probably our most successful specimen, it does take up a lot of the available space. The pair of azaleas are at the north end of the front of the bungalow, they have come into their own this year as the baby willow which shaded them has died. 

Physically not much bigger than azaleas are our baby rhododendrons, but their flowers are much bigger. They inhabit the bank above the patio (left) and a bed in front of the summer house which they are forced to share with several peonies.

We installed about 9 rhododendrons half way down the bank towards the road. As I have remarked previously, I planted them far too close together and also too close to some camellias. This area drains too well and has poor soil so they have a short but sweet flowering season. Rearranging the bank to space them all out isn't really a practical proposition, there are simply too many plants here!

Our pride and joy are those three at the top of the garden which escaped the attention of the builders when the house went up 50 years ago. This is one of two we bought for an outrageous price from the garden centre in Ross on Wye shortly after we arrived here. Amazingly, we managed to get both on the rather small bus but they have grown a bit since!

We inherited the purple one which undoubtedly inspired the other purchases. Very little stops it and every year or two it pitches forward and has to be given a serious hair cut. It would have swamped the other two by now if it had its way. The red rhododendron is the other one that came home on the bus. I have encouraged it to spread downwards and anticipate it will root itself and grow upwards too. I love this picture because it reminds me of our annual visits to Lydney Park Gardens which couldn't happen this year because of Yuehong's knee operation. The final picture shows the azalea we inherited on arrival which explains its size! It's a marvellous sight when we pull back the bedroom curtains each morning at this time of year. 

Click here for the next part (to come) and click here for the 2025 index.