May 15, 2026

Azalea Season (and a Tree Peony That Outdid Itself)

Mid-May is when the azaleas take the baton from the tulips and run with it. I have three, all pink, all completely different pinks, and for two weeks they make the rest of the garden look like it isn't trying.

Azalea bush smothered in salmon-pink blooms edged in white, with yellow pansies at its feet — The salmon one — every bloom edged in white like someone piped icing around it.

The salmon azalea by the walk is the oldest and the showiest. It disappears under its own flowers; from the street you can't see a single leaf. The pansies I tucked underneath in March turned out to be exactly the right shade of butter yellow, which I would love to claim was planned.

Soft pink azalea with darker pink centers blooming against a white fence — The pale one against the fence, photobombed by its magenta neighbor.

Close view of pale pink azalea flowers streaked with deeper pink — Up close it's never just pink — every flower is streaked and freckled differently.

The pale pink one against the white fence is the interesting one up close: white flowers brushed with pink, freckled throats, and every so often a whole branch decides to bloom solid magenta — a sport from whatever it was grafted on. I've stopped correcting it. It's earned the eccentricity.

Dense mound of coral-pink azalea flowers with white picotee edges — The coral mound, mid-May. Not one visible gap.

And then, just when the azaleas think they've won the month, the tree peony opens.

Tree peony bush loaded with huge ruffled raspberry-red blooms against white siding — The tree peony. Those blooms are the size of dinner plates, and it grew maybe thirty of them.

This plant came to me as a bare stick with two roots about six years ago, and I nearly gave up on it twice. Now every May it covers itself in ruffled raspberry blooms the size of my two hands spread out, and people genuinely stop on the sidewalk. Tree peonies don't die back like the herbaceous kind — that woody trunk is the whole point — so the only care it gets is a top-dressing of compost and me telling it it's beautiful.

Notes for next year: the azaleas get their trim right after bloom (they set next year's buds by midsummer — prune late and you prune the flowers off), and everybody gets a feeding of Holly-tone since all of these are acid-lovers.