Not Your Grandmother’s Azaleas

Katie Elzer-Peters

Make room in the garden and on the shelf—there’s a new Encore Azalea on the market this year. Autumn Fire is a dwarf Encore with deep scarlet red semi-double flowers and glossy green leaves that turn a burnished bronze during the winter. It’s No. 30 in the Encore family. Kip McConnell, Director of Plant Development Services, Inc., says, “What makes them ‘Encores’ is the reblooming characteristic. They are not multiples of the same plant. Buddy breeds with a wide base of azalea genetics, resulting in huge range of sizes, shapes and colors between varieties.”

“Buddy” is Robert (Buddy) E. Lee, the breeder and mastermind behind the Encore Azalea. “I grew up on a dairy and crop farm in Louisiana north of New Orleans,” he says. “I started a nursery when I was in high school, focusing on evergreen azaleas. I noticed that there were some azaleas that tended to bloom in the fall, so I started to collect them.” He was intrigued by the fall-blooming azaleas, but they weren’t consistent in performance.

One summer during the early 1970s, Buddy was visiting a friend and noticed a big azalea flowering like crazy along the side of the garage.

“My friend had sponsored a plant expedition and, in return, they sent him a stick with roots,” Buddy recalls. “He planted it and forgot about it. He wasn’t a big azalea guy.” Buddy took cuttings and brought the plant home to cross with the fall bloomers. The end result? A shrub that would launch an entirely new category of plants: reblooming varieties of old garden favorites. It’s a cliché, but 100% true: this ain’t your grandma’s azalea.

Through meticulous breeding over multiple generations, Buddy ironed out the inconsistencies found in fall-blooming species azaleas and created a class of plants that reliably flowered on schedule, three times a year. That’s when he sought out the help of Flowerwood Nursery, a nearby wholesale grower. “At the time, azaleas were viewed as commodity plants with set prices in a saturated market,” Buddy says. “Harry Smith, the owner of Flowerwood, shared my vision of controlling the plant from production to marketing. He saw what a game-changer the reblooming azalea could be.”

What now seems like a no-brainer—direct-to-consumer marketing—wasn’t even on anyone’s radar in the early 1990s. There wasn’t a roadmap for success, so they drew one.

“Buddy has done more garden club talks than anyone in the country,” Kip adds. PDSI was created, as an offshoot of Flowerwood, to handle breeding, development, licensing and marketing of new plants—the whole package.

“We launched with a full-page ad in Southern Living magazine,” Kip says. “Now there are other ways to reach consumers, but that was a big one at the time for evergreen azaleas.” They sent (and continue to send) plants to public gardens and azalea festivals. They’ve run ads on the radio and television, co-opping with their retailers. “It’s a multi-layered approach,” Kip says.

Demand increases each year and PDSI continues to add licensed growers. “Many garden centers don’t even carry the old azaleas anymore,” Kip says. Gardeners, having experienced the rebloomers (including azaleas, roses, hydrangeas and lilacs—to list a few genera with “improved varieties”) are no longer content with a one-trick pony. Alone on the frontier for a while, Buddy now feels the competition hot on his heels. He has a plan to outrun them, though. Next up? Improved cold hardiness, starting with Autumn Fire. GP

Katie Elzer-Peters is a garden writer and owner of The Garden of Words, LLC, a marketing and PR firm handing mostly green-industry clients. Contact her at Katie@thegardenofwords.com or at www.thegardenofwords.com.

To grow or retail Encore azaleas, contact Plant Development Services, Inc. at (888) 922-7374.