Azalea styling advice

radhatter

Yamadori
Messages
88
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Location
Seattle, Washington
USDA Zone
8b
I haven’t worked with azalea before but I’ve got this azalea to work with and I’m interested in some opinions on what direction to take it with styling.

Will deciduous azalea readily back bud on old wood?

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Azaleas can be tricky to maintain until you get everything correct then they seem to do really well.

I'm looking at the thick base and the 2 thicker trunks as probably assets. With that in mind I've tilted the whole tree around 30 degrees and removed a lot of the smaller trunks to open the thick base as a real trunk.
I've then shortened those thicker trunks to try to get some lower buds that will hopefully become branches. Azaleas generally bud very well after pruning and can be chopped right back to older, bare wood and still recover well.
azalea 2.png

Please be aware that it is really difficult to design a tree just from a few 2D photos. Very hard to judge which trunks move which way and where branches start and go to. Always check that what's proposed actually works with what's really there.
Will the roots allow the 30 deg tilt without burying half and exposing the other half? Are those trunks actually alive? Etc..
Also recognise that any option is only one of many possible options.
 
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