Sandra McDonald Azaleas

Sandra McDonald gardens in coastal Virginia is a nearly ideal azalea growing part of the country.

Her evergreen azalea hybrids were developed starting in 1975 and are still being developed in 2005.  Her early goals were more compact plant habits for smaller modern gardens and different color and flower forms from the evergreen azaleas already in the trade.  The Beltsville Dwarf ‘Dainty Rose’ was used in some early crosses.  Later a few florist azaleas were included in the hybridizing for more double flowers, larger flowers, and special coloration like the “white blotch”.  These were crossed with hardy azaleas in the hopes of developing some landscape plants with these florist plant characteristics.  A few of the USDA tetraploids such as ‘Hershey Red Tetra’ were introduced into some crosses.

Sandra especially likes the soft colors so most of her azaleas are in soft pink or lavender shades, but more recently she has been working with some bright red crosses because of general public tastes.  She is always watching for unusual seedlings and some of the plants are not what she expected, but were striking enough to save.